Wisdom saved the day on Wednesday, July 31st, when some displaced people of Okomu and other thirty communities situated in Ovia South West Local Government Area of Edo State, were on the verge of venting their anger on representatives of the Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc which is situated in the locality.
The anger of the people, who suffered loss of their means of livelihood and properties even as some of them lost their family members occasioned by the attack on them, is believed to have been triggered by some hardliners not comfortable with what they see as insincerity and been shortchanged by the Oil Palm Company in the conduct of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to the communities.
The company, through its representative, Fidelis Olise, the Communication Officer, who represented the Managing Director, Graham D. Hefer, had invited the people to a gathering somewhere in Benin City where they promised to hand over some palliatives and other forms of support to them to cushion the effects of the trauma they must be experiencing as a result of the carnage in their community.
However, the people were shell shocked when at the end of the day they noticed that what was made available to them was peanuts – less than 30 cartons of indomie, less than ten bags of rice, garri and beans for the alleged about 3,000 victims.
A leader of the communities, Atele Edonghan Friday, who spoke on their behalf berated the company for the shoddy treatment they are receiving from them.
Amid cheers from other communities members, he said: “Okomu Oil Palm Plc know that in the present crisis in Okomu about 30 communities have been displaced. So, these items as the capacity of the company is not worth what it’s supposed to have done to the communities.
“They know everything about what is happening. And as a company having about thirty communities within the Okomu axis. If you look at the items on the ground. If these things have been shared among the people of the communities that were displaced. We’re telling the management of Okomu Oil Palm Plc to add more.”
Seeing that the atmosphere was getting tensed up, Olise took off as he quickly dashed into the vehicle that brought him and sped off amidst dust swirling into the air in the vehicle’s trail.
Apart from loss of means of livelihood and destruction of properties, scores of the people of the localities, including soldiers on guard duty at the company, were killed in the aftermath of the surprise attack on the area about a month ago.
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