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Fight Over Illegal Logging Business In Okoumu Forest ReserveTurns Area Into A War Zone

FOLLOWING  on from an interview granted by the Western Zone scribe of the Ijaw
Youth Congress (IYC) Mr Olu Derimo, published in an online media blog,
www.congressng.com on the 28 th March 2022, where he attributed the attack on
Inikorogha community in Ovia South West L.G.A. to a supremacy battle between
Governor Obaseki’s SSA, Mr Godstime Ogidigba, and Mr Robert Okubo over who
controls the illegal logging business in the Okomu Forest Reserve and Okomu
National Park.
This protracted fight has now even spilt over into the Okomu Oil Palm Company
Plc’s Extension 1 plantation where Inikorogha community residents have illegally
moved onto the company’s land and these criminal elements have even
threatened Government Institutions such as EdoGIS, warning them to stay away
from the area or risk being attacked.
It will also be recalled that the Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc has been a target of
attack by militants since February 2022 who have also been involved in the illegal
theft of rubber and oil palm fruit. Worried by the incessant illegal logging in the
Okomu Forest reserve and ongoing attacks on employees and product theft from
the company, the Obaseki administration have made frantic efforts to curtail this
illegality and even stationed Marine Police on the Okomu River to apprehend
illegal loggers as they ferry logs to different destinations via this river. Whilst the
presence of gunboats on the Okomu River has yielded some results, the recent
eruption of violence and squatting by Inikorogha indigenes on private property
cannot be condoned, nor the threats by them against Government agencies
tolerated. The Government should not relent in taking a firm position against the
likes of these criminal factions in Okomu Forest Reserve and the Okomu National
Park with the aim of routing them from these areas, even if it means bringing the
army in to sweep the entire place clean in order to remove squatters and to

restore law and order in this area. Without a strong arm approach, these criminal
elements will continue to persist whilst investment suffers, the peace loving
citizens continue to be bullied and the Governor’s MEGA theme will remain a pipe
dream under these bandits and their selfish interests.

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