As the world gets set to commemorate the 2012 “World Food day’ on Tuesday the 16 October, 2012, (please note that this date is past and that HURAC is reporting this news lately) Ogoni people are set to inaugurate a Farmers Council. This is coming in the heels of protests against massive land seizures by the Rivers State government and threatening floods affecting parts of the Niger Delta and the entire Nigeria.
A press release signed by Mr. Celestine Akpobari of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum and on behalf of Social Action, Ogoni Solidarity Forum, Environmental Rights Action, Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) and the Peoples Coalition for Food Sovereignty (PCFS), indicates that the Ogoni people will use the occasion to raise awareness on several other issues affecting the nationality.
“the over 1.2 million marginalized and economically dis-empowered Ogoni people, a distinct indigenous ethnic nationality in the oil rich but impoverished Niger Delta region of Nigeria would be inaugurating a body that will gather what is left of its once vibrant and very successful farming and fishing community” parts of the statement reads.
“With the increasing threat of large-scale land seizure in the area by the Rivers State government of Nigeria and in the face of the daunting recently released and yet to be implemented UNEP report on Ogoni which merely confirms the hydro carbonization of the water resources, destruction of fisheries and that “soils are polluted with hydrocarbons up to a depth of 5 metres in 49 observed places”, the Ogoni can only survive with an organized platform such as the “Farmers Council” which would research on a way out of the present world economic and food crisis which has affected the Ogoni people even harder” the statement continues.
The statement notes the level of poverty ravaging families as indicated in a working paper released by UNICEF (Global Inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion,” Social and Economic Policy Working Paper (New York: UNICEF, April 2011). The UNICEF report had noted that the wealthiest 20 per cent of humankind enjoy over 70 percent of total world income, the bottom 20 percent share only one percent. Half of the world’s population live on less than $2.50 a day, nearly one billion live in hunger, and close to two billion are trapped in multidimensional poverty.
Akpobari is convinced that the inauguration of the proposed farmers council is certainly in line with the theme for the 2012 World Food Day “Agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world”. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said this theme has been chosen to highlight the role of cooperatives in improving food security and contributing to the eradication of hunger.
The proposed body is expected to design design an informed and coordinated approach to overcome hunger in Ogoni territory.
Source: OgoniNews
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