Foreign investors chided for cheating

The Registrar of the Diocese of Egba(Anglican Communion), Hon. Benjamin Ogunmodede, has lamented the rate at which rural dwellers are being cheated and dislodged from their lands  by foreign investors.He said this while delivering a paper on Environmental degradation in some rural communities in Egbaland and adverse effect on the rural inhabitants at the second session of the 12th synod of the diocese in Abeokuta on Friday.He said that the foreign investors, mostly Chinese, had been intimidating the rural dwellers  by paying them pittance due to what he described as the latters ignorance as well as collaboration with the traditional rulers.We discovered that our rural inhabitants are being cheated due to illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and the collaboration of local and township chiefs who appear as middlemen or original land owners of their homestead. Ogunmodede maintained that some villages had been completely sacked or rendered desolate and abandoned due to quarrying activities.The legal practitioner frowned at the decision of some of the private companies not performing their corporate social responsibilities such as the construction of alternative roads, provision of water, electricity and health centres, to reciprocate what they gained from the people.Our people do not have knowledgeable people like relevant professionals to negotiate on their behalf. The result is serious and monumental cheating of our rural inhabitants.If you are to deprive rural dwellers of their lands or inheritance in perpetuity or forever, you must be able to pay adequate compensation, commensurate to their loss in terms of their land and racks.He enjoined rural dwellers to always consult their elite sons and daughters like Engineers, Quantity Surveyors and Estate Environmentalist to help them determine their rights vis-à-vis the value of their land and rocks to be acquired.Ogunmodede suggested that the Ministry of Mines and Steel must be pro-active at ensuring that rural dwellers with rocks on their lands are not cheated by prospective or would-be-investors.He added that there could be community resolution between both parties through their coronet-Obas sot aht they could resort to litigation if all efforts failed.
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