Nigeria:
Michelin’s rubber plantations destroyed women’s livelihoods
“I
don’t want money. I want my land back…if they give me one million
Naira [the local currency] today, I will still go broke, but if
I have my land I can always farm to take care of my family and possibly
pass the land on to my children.”
(Woman from Iguoriakhi)
The
France-based transnational company Michelin, one of the major players
in world tyre production, has quite recently established rubber
plantations in Nigeria.
It
all started on May 29, 2007, when over 3,500 hectares of Iguobazuwa
Forest Reserve -including individual and communal farmlands- were
allotted to Michelin to be converted into rubber plantations in
an illegal deal without the consent of community people or proper
Environmental Impact Assessment.
Iguobazuwa
is home to a population of more than 20,000
agrarian people, 85% of whom depend on the
dense forest for their daily livelihoods. The forest
is rich in biodiversity, including animals such as monkeys, antelope,
grasscutter, tortoise, snails and birds. Iguobazuwa was also a place
where food crops were produced like cassava, yam, plantain, pineapple,
melon, corn and vegetables, whether edible or medicinal.
Communities
surrounding the Iguobazuwa forest include Aifesoba, Iguoriakhi,
Igueihase, Ora, Amienghomwan, Ugbokun, Obaretin, Obosogbe, Okoro
and Iguobazuwa. Although the forest land legally belongs
to the Government, in 1972 communities were granted rights over
it, with some parts of those forests allocated rotationally to members
of the community for use as farmlands.
In
December 2007, Michelin bulldozed the 3,500 hectares of forests
as well as the people’s farmlands, leaving the affected community
people uncompensated. Local people found themselves from one day
to another with both sources of livelihood –their forest and farmlands-
completely destroyed. Iguobazuwa communities lost everything.
In
May 2008, the company started planting the rubber trees. Although
the trees are still at an early stage, as the experience in many
other countries shows, communities will have to also face the additional
impacts resulting from the plantations themselves.
“Two
years after my husband’s death, I started farming… Michelin came
with his evil bulldozer and destroyed everything I had planted.
I was crying…I was trying to stop them; they threatened to bulldoze
me with their caterpillar if I don’t allow them.”
Farmer
women now jobless…
The
unholy arrival of Michelin to Iguobazuwa forest after over 300 years
of peaceful co-existence among communities has brought nothing but
hunger, malnutrition, diseases, poverty, air and water pollution,
soil erosion, social dislocation, increase in social vices, alteration
of age-old traditional practices, lack of fuel wood and bush meat.
Their
destroyed farms had produced a number of diverse food crops:
I
had two acres of farmland in which I planted cassava, plantains,
pineapples, cocoyam, pepper, and pineapples. Now, the farm
is gone and I couldn’t have any source of food or livelihood anymore’.
(Woman from Aifesoba village)
The
majority of the women who shared their experiences said that usually
the man prepares the farmland for planting and the woman takes care
of all the other activities from cultivation to harvesting. So it
is women who use the land for cultivation of crops. Now that they
find their farmlands destroyed women have become farm labourers
in other farms in nearby forests or villages yet to be affected
by the rampaging Michelin; while others have been rendered jobless,
and hungry.
Michelin
has destroyed our farmlands. I feel pained by their actions. The
farms used to provide food for our families. I used to assist in
paying my children’s school fees. We want them to pay for our crops
and farmlands. They should leave our lands for us. We want our land
back. Our lives depend on it. Now we are jobless. No more bitter
leaves, water leaves and pumpkin leaves. My husband has been jobless
for years; we can’t afford to depend on our husbands for everything.
We want Michelin to compensate us…the value is too much to ignore.
(Woman
from Aifesoba community)
…
and pennyless
Usually
women got the money from what they sell from the farm produce at
the local market. Hence, the robbery of their farms have greatly
affected the women folk as a lot of the responsibilities for family
upkeep rest on the women, so they have no other choice than to resort
to menial jobs in order to survive.
Aren’t
these people sending us to go and steal?’ They took away my four
acre land and the source of livelihood for my family. They drove
me away from the farm while I was still working, without any explanation
or compensation. My husband lost his job as a driver in the city
and I have four children, all of whom are now out of school for
lack of school fees. (Woman
from Aifesoba community)
The
majority of the women now engage in small scale subsistence farming
within their compounds. Some buy cassava crops from those who have,
and process them for sale when they mature.
Caretaker
women in trouble
Apart
from being in charge of water uses for domestic activities, clothing
provision and collection of seeds and fruits, women are responsible
of collecting medicinal plants that are vital in local communities’
traditional practices linked to health. The disappearance of the
forests has caused that now women must go far away -with the shortest
distance of about 15km apart- to get herbs to treat some ailments.
I
am pregnant and ill, and the herbs are nowhere to be found. Before
now, we used to go to the bush to get herbs to cure all sorts of
ailments. You know there are some ailments that orthodox medicines
cannot cure; but now we cannot access them because Michelin has
bulldozed our forests. You can see that my legs and limbs are swollen;
unlike before when I get pregnant, I cannot get those very effective
herbs for my condition anymore. (Heavily
pregnant woman from Aifesoba)
As
a woman from Iguoriakhi says:
We
just know that Michelin is doing the damage. They are the people
we are seeing. In the past we fed from the forest; our life depended
on the forest. There are a lot of people in my community that do
not know where hospitals are, because the forest provides their
medicinal needs..
An
83 year old woman from Iguobazuwa community explains the
situation as follows:
I
have lived in Iguobazuwa for 65 years. I used to go to the forest
to pluck some medicinal herbs to treat my children whenever they
fall ill. It was from the forest I got medicinal leaves to treat
myself all through the years of my several times of pregnancy.
Women
standing up for their rights
Women
know that nothing good for them has or will result from the activities
of Michelin in their area. They are starting to organize themselves
and are looking for support. They want their lands back, their trees
planted again and also to be fully compensated for the destroyed
crops.
They
are decided to carry out actions, protest marches, and demonstrations
to Michelin Nigeria to enforce their demands in resisting all forms
of large scale tree plantations in their territories.
“If
I have my way, I would stop them from buying our lands for rubber
plantation…If I have my way, I would uproot the whole rubber plantation
with my hands… They should leave our land for us.”
For that, they need
to overcome some problems. As a woman from
Iguobazuwa community says:
In the past, we
used to have a women group, but now, it no longer exist. That is
one of the reasons why we have not been able to confront them as
a group. No unity, no resistance!
Traditionally,
Iguobazuwa women have not participated in any form of resistance,
until recently when some community women and some men from Aifesoba
and Obosogbe communities engaged in a protest march in Benin city
to denounce the activities of Michelin in their locality.
More
recently, women have become more assertive to know and exercise
their rights, the value of their forest and how to become more active
in the decision making process as it relates to good forest management
practices in their localities.
In
Aifesoba community, the women -in the company of men- engaged in
a protest march to the forest area where Michelin’s trucks and bulldozers
were busy felling trees. They stopped them from working on two occasions;
on the third time Michelin got mobile police men to guard them and
to intimidate and scare the community people away. As a result,
some women from other communities are now scared of taking any move
to confront Michelin as they are afraid of being maltreated, intimidated
or harassed the way Aifesoba community people were treated.
As a fallout from the
2-day workshop held on the 4th -5th November
2008, Michelin called some members of two communities (Aifesoba,
and Iguobazuwa) out of the nine communities directly impacted, and
payed them compensation. One group from Iguobazuwa was paid fully
while the other community from Aifesoba was payed what the community
people described as peanuts, as according to them, it was a far
cry from the extent of destruction and was not commensurate with
the amount valued for the crops destroyed.
At the end of the workshop
the women released a communiqué in which they demanded a series
of urgent actions. Among them, they demanded that the current Edo
State Government should review the sale of Iguobazuwa forest reserve,
that Michelin Nigeria should return their lands to them and replant
every tree fell, with full compensation for crops destroyed, and
that the invasion of their forests by Michelin Nigeria should not
be seen as a sign of development, but of impoverishment, as their
lives and livelihoods have been jeopardized and that further expansion
into their lands at Iguobazuwa MUST STOP.
But the most important
thing is their determination to get their lands back.
