Barrister Nosa Peter Osifo, a former chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Edo State Council, has called on the All Progressives Congress(APC) candidate in the forthcoming coming governorship election, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, “to summarily look into the issues of the land allocations, with the view to right the wrongs,” adding that “luckily LASCO(Labour and Civil Society Coalition) and E-MALL(Edo Movement Against Landgrabbing & Livelihood Losses) are already taking a course of political actions that could help the incoming government address the land crises.”
He made this known at the Voters Assembly, a Civil Society/Rural Community based voter’s mobilisation event organised by Labour & Civil Society Coalition, Edo State chapter in support of APC governorship flagbearer, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu and his deputy, Mallam Gani Audu,held in Benin on Wednesday morning.
Barrister Osifo thanked the organisers of the programme “for putting up this great event, which I learnt, is a follow up to a long stretch of programme. This event and programme cannot be more timely than this moment, when Edo State is going into a governorship election, which will bring about a governor and his deputy that would pilot the affairs of the state in the four years.”
Going forward, he said: “Indeed, Edo State LASCO and E-MALL have also done well in mobilising the mass of their members and the public to the plight of the forest bearing rural communities and their people, who I learnt, are bugged down by landgrabbing, deforestation, environmental violation and livelihood losses etc, said to be occasioned by undue ceding of forest land, belonging to the local communities and their people.”
Tony Erha, an environmentalist, who facilitated the programme, had earlier inundated the gathering about the various landgrabbing issues that his group has been facing throughout the first tenure of the incumbent governor of the state, Mr. Godwin Obaseki.
In his contribution, Osa Director, a media consultant, told the gathering that Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu was well positioned to address the issues raised with reference to his Simple Agenda manifesto.
