Gov. Imoke
Diana Okon-Effiong
Akamkpa (Cross River) A Non-Governmental Organisation has called for the expulsion of Wilmar plantations, an agro-based multinational from Cross River State over alleged land grabbing, community and environmental rights violations.
The call was made in Akamkpa by Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) at an interactive session with journalists after a two-day community empowerment workshop.
According to Mr Godwin Ojo, the Executive Director of the Lagos-based organisation, Wilmar is engaging in what the NGO calls land grabbing and appropriating community farmlands for palm oil plantation for bio fuels.
The group said that the palm oil plantations were cited by Wilmar in Cross River communities to produce biofuels which makes fuel for cars and machines compete with food sources.
They said that the impacted communities who are victims of land grabbing were from Betem/Ehom, Akpet and Idoma in Biase and Mbarakom/Uwet/Njagachang and Mfamosing/Aningeje in Akamkpa Local Government Areas respectively.
Ojo said since our forest are not for sale the NGO had resolved to draw the attention of government at all levels to proper and sustainable management of lands and forests in Nigeria.
He said that the group was also drawing government’s attention to the impact of land grabbing on people and environment and how this affected our food production system and local economies.
Ojo said : ” In the last 10 years throughout Nigeria, land grabbing continues to increase with tens of thousands of hectares already appropriated by big corporations in Adamawa, Taraba, Kwara, Ekiti Edo and Cross River States.
” In Cross River state over 150,000 hectares of land has been grabbed from rural communities. Very often communal land rights is being trampled with gross human rights violations. Serious environmental degradation and deforestation.
The group said the Land Use Act of 1978 should also be expunged from Nigerian laws because it takes away customary land rights from communities.The law is obnoxious because it is obsolete and of no relevance to our collective current reality,” it stated.
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