News in brief: Cocoa farmers in Ondo state are suing the government and Sao Agro-Allied Services Limited over the company’s activities in the Oluwa Forest Reserve, where the farmers have been farming for decades.
Cocoa farmers in Ondo state are suing the government and Sao Agro-Allied Services Limited, an agricultural company, over activities in the Oluwa Forest Reserve.
The farmer have been using the land for farming activities for decades and later became tenants, paying rent to the government. However, things took a sour turn when the government announced that they need to vacate the land as it had been sold to Sao Agro-Allied Services Limited.
Armed forces had to forcefully eject the farmers initially but they got a favourable court ruling that placed a restraining order on the company to seize its activities of clearing the farmland.
With crops on the farm, the over 10,000 farmers in the region wanted to stop the ongoing destruction. Although, the latest report shows the company failed to heed the court’s order.
It is not clear what the end goal of the farmers is yet but they could be hoping to delay the activities until they can harvest their cocoa beans. According to this insight, cocoa harvest is usually between October and February.
The state government’s contribution to this debacle confounds the imagination. A 2022 article claims that Ondo state is the largest producer of cocoa in Nigeria, producing about 80,000 tons of the crop annually. It contributes highest to Nigeria’s total cocoa output, which, as NBS statistics show, was the highest agricultural export product of 2022.
So, unless Sao Agro-Allied Services Limited is making a sweet deal with the state government that gives more revenue to its purse than cocoa farming at the detriment of local participation, its moves are not clear.
