Farmer Cautions Land Sellers

A farmer, Mr Innocent
Oyeni, has called on land sellers to have a rethink while selling off fresh water Lands as it is capable of depriving them of fresh water deposits.
Oyeni, a yam farmer from Afam in the Oyigbo Local Government Area of Rivers State, who stated this while speaking to our correspondent in Port Harcourt, Monday, said the assault on poor communities land was coming from more than one front.
According to him, rich countries were moving to other countries, especially in the West African sub-region to acquire land to enable them grow foods to meet their own local demand.
He said such development has resulted in negative land grabs with the attendant rights abuses as indigenous people were disposed of their land to enable such international land speculators fulfil their biofuel ambitions.
He said reports have it that middle East countries seeking food security have a huze presence in some sub-Saharan Africa to leave lands to grow food crops for their own people.
Explaining further he said there were indications to show that some powerful Nigerians were being drawn into the race for land grabbing.
According to a report obtained by our correspondent from Global Corp Ltd, the Chief  Executive Officer of the company Mr Enbong Jamie Idiong, said “Nigeria has the terrain to provide 100 per cent of  Gulf’s food needs.”
According to the report, Nigeria has around 71.2 million hectares of farmland with less than 50 per cent under utilised.
Commenting on such indices, Oyeni said there was need for the country to fully utilise the available land to enable investors export back 100 per cent of the crop and create employment opportunities for people of Nigeria.
According to reliable industry sources, during the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua regime, the former Minister for Agriculture,  Abba Ruma and his Attorney General and Minister of Justice counterpart, Michael Aondoakaa discussed issues of leasing farmlands to the Gulf states.
While our correspondent further gathered that the discussion were inconclusive due to Yar’Adua’s demise, there are also reports that First Trustee an arm of First Bank PLC was involved in a $1.8 billion farmland leave deal between Nigeria and United Arab Emirates.
According to Oyeni, stakeholders should rise against such moves that has come to be known in industry circles as “Arabs land grabs”.
Explaining further, the farmer said if the campaign was sustained, it could degenerate into another colonisation without arms but Africans themselves selling their countries willingly.
He argued that there was serious under investment in the agricultural sector even as he said over 80 per cent of foreign direct investment  (FDI) in the country was in oil, gas and telecoms.