Stop Apartheid On Edo & Nigerian Soil By Dr. Graham Hefer &Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc!
This is a dire call to civil society activists, Nigerians, men and women of good conscience around the world, to urgently stop the oppression and undue police harassment and arrests of the poor people of Irhue Clan, in Uhunmwode local government area of Edo State, Nigeria by Dr. Graham Hefer and his Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc. We also appeal to all to get Dr. Hefer and Okomu Company out of our land. The sin of the peace-loving people of Irhue Clan is simply because they are opposed to the seizure of their God-given forest land, by Dr. Hefer, for his multinational Okomu Plc.
The latest victim of such undue police intimidation and arrest by Dr. Hefer and the almighty Okomu Company is Tony Erha, a journalist and environmental activist, for being against the land grab. On Friday 19th August, 2016 Erha was bundled away to the Edo State Police Command on a false allegation of authoring some offensive online publication against Dr. Hefer and Okomu Company in early May, 2016 and that it was capable of breaching the public peace.
Even though the said online reports did not after all cause such breeches for over four long months, until when Erha was arrested last week. In a measure that bespeaks double standard, the Edo Police has failed to question or even arrest Dr. Hefer for midwifing the land seizure, heinous destructions and forceful acquisition of the land, to replace with oil palm trees, thereby disobeying the laws of a sovereign-Nigeria, albeit depriving the diverse communities their original means of livelihood.
Although some of the Policemen at the State Command frowned at the unbecoming conducts of Dr. Hefer, a foreigner, by harassing Nigerians with Nigerian Policemen and other security operatives, that is not to push aside the fact that some of the Policemen may be feeding fat from the multinational company and are prone to doing Dr. Hefer’s bidding. Having generously donated to the Ehor Divisional Police, what will they not do to whip Irhue Clan (which is under its direct jurisdiction) into a submission plot to forfeit the forest land to Okomu Company?
It is very unfortunate that even though the oppressive policy of Apartheid is assumed to have long been crushed in South Africa, Dr. Graham Hefer, a South Africa native, Nigeria’s immigrant and Managing Director of the multinational agro-allied firm, has obviously come to Nigeria to re-establish Apartheid, so as to set a new Guinness Book of Record as the first Afrikaner (as white settlers in South Africa are called) to humiliate Nigerians and the country’s sovereignty, in their own soil, to their own eyes. Even then, can Nigerian residents display such impunity to South Africans and their laws on their soil?
After unduly bulldozing down crops, timbers and forest resources belonging to Irhue Clan and Government, some of which it carted away to illegal sawmills, Okomu Company confiscated thousands of hectares of high forested lands from the Owan Forest Reserve etc. which belongs to the Irhue Clan of Edo State and its neighbours. The Edo State Government only holds the forest land as an overseer and Trustee for the aforementioned Clan and others contiguous to the forest.
Is it not also unfortunate that Dr. Heifer and his almighty Okomu Company, continued to hold on to the land, even though it had long been revoked and gazette by the Edo State Government, the sole authority on land acquisition and revocation in the state? This is despite that Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Aliu Oshiomhole, had severally written and publicly communicated the Government’s revocation order to Okomu Company. Okomu has ignored Government’s warning that it should not plant on the vast land. Are Okomu Company and Dr. Hefer above the Nigerian law?
It goes that Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc unduly bought the 14,000 hectares (ha) rich rainforest land and some additional 4,000 ha it acquired through the window, from Iyayi Group of Companies, a Benin-based firm, who paid only peanuts to acquire the total 18,000 hectares for regeneration. That is after Iyayi had for about 50 years made huge fortunes from logging the same forest land with impunity. Now mandated to regenerate the forest, so that other loggers could also benefit, Iyayi illegally sold the land for billions of Naira to A & Hatman Limited, who in turn sold it Okomu Company.
This goes to confirm reasons by Edo State Government for revoking the land. According to the Edo State Government of Nigeria Gazette No. 16, Vol. 19, published on 5th November, 2015 the about 14,000 hectares (ha) rich rainforest land and others were revoked because of its illegal sales to second and third party, and that it cannot be sold or commercialized by Iyayi Group of Companies, to whom it had been de-reserved for Regeneration. The Government Gazette further cited that the acquisition by Okomu Company negates the Forestry Laws Cap 59, Vol. III, Section 18 of Bendel State of Nigeria, now applicable to Edo State, that: “Rights in the Forest reserves cannot be alienated, sold, mortgaged or transferred without the consent of the Executive Governor of the State’’. The Gazette further emphasized the Forestry Amendment Law 2002, Section 44 that: De-reservation of the Forest for Commercial purpose is highly prohibited”
Similarly, Okomu Company and Dr. Hefer had earlier dubiously bought over 15, 000 ha of land from the same Iyayi Companies, which it turned into palm oil from the buffers of the Okomu National Park. Today, this evil acquisition has imperiled the Okomu National Park, the only protected lowland rainforest enclave in Nigeria.
Conservationists and the discerning public have been wondering why such a vast and rich Owan Forest Reserve was bulldozed and being planted by Okomu Company, without having an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study, which the Federal Ministry of Environment, EIAs overseer, says is mandatory before the commencement of such project. Funny enough, Okomu Company belatedly concocted a Draft EIA report on the vast land, which it want the Minister of Environment to endorse, more than two and half years after bulldozing and planting on a great deal of the land, about the size of Benin City.
Confronted by the fears that the aboriginal communities of Orhua, Oke, Umokpe and Ekpan that constitute Irhue Clan of Uhunmwode LGA of Edo State, owners of the land and other users have to lose the land for ever, the Irhue Clan had gone on several public protests and campaigns before constituted authourities, locally and internationally to get Okomu Company and its mother companies in South Africa and Luxembourg, Europe to stop the impunities by Dr. Hefer and the company. This has been in vain.
The forest land is the only source of livelihood for the ever increasing population of the Irhue locals, surrounding towns and villages and loggers and forest users, who come from far and near. t is the communities’ only farmland, water supply as it houses traditional worship centres and fetish groves. It is one of the few last remnants of the lowland rainforest enclaves in Africa in which are priceless animals and plants and natural forms that conservation experts from around the world had earmarked for an extension of the Okomu National Park, in order to conserve for posterity, the endangered and peculiar species found on the high forest.
Report by
The Okpamakhin Initiative
(A Worldwide Community-Development Organisation)