There is intense unease in Edo State as the State Government has been dragged through the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Communities of West African States (ECOWAS), Abuja, by over 45 forest and agrarian communities of the Owan Forest Zone of the state.
The communities spread across four local government areas of Ovia North East, Uhunmwode, Owan West and Owan East.
The suit, with reference no ECW/CCJ/APP/22/22, was filed on 11 May, 2022, by its first plaintiff, the Incorporated Trustees of the Okpamakhin Community Initiative, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), comprising farmers and other land users, drawn from the cluster communities (clans) of Irhue, Ozalla, Ora, Iuleha, Sobe and others.
The second plaintiffs are eight men and women, who are farmers and other land users of the forest zone.
The suit was filed by the communities’ lawyer, President Aigbokhan ESQ, with his legal team.
Aigbokhan Esq., a Benin City-based Freedom of Information (FOI) protagonist and human rights lawyer, had recently won a major suit at the same ECOWAS Court, against Edo State Government, with thousands of US Dollars damages to the petitioners.
By the ECOWAS Court’s suit, the raging disputes on the forest zone, between the state government and the communities, also called Okpamakhin, seem to have come to a climax.
Over a year ago, the state governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki, in conjunction with Mr Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, inaugurated a N69 billion fund for establishment of oil palm plantations in the state, involving and promoting some foreign and private companies and local growers of oil palm as beneficiaries.
Governor Obaseki told newsmen that he had earmarked tens of thousands of the state’s forest reserve estate for the project, which have continued to be under disputes.
The statutory defendant in the suit is the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN), standing in for state governments on such matters as its is with the ECOWAS Court.
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