As Inyoba-Ama Community in Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State and Winsko Services Limited continue to contend over who is responsible for the encroachment in the former’s ancestral lands, Youth Leader of the Community, Richard Pepple has raised alarm that the Community’s means of livelihood has been destroyed.

In an interview with Kristina Reports on Friday, January 26, 2024 in Bonny, Rivers State, Pepple narrated his experience when he got information about the incident, lamenting that the earth moving equipment deployed in the Community had destroyed the only means of livelihood the people of the area have. 

“On the 15th of January, 2024, I got a call from the village that there’s a certain company in the community forest, destroying our property and farm lands including our economic trees. So, I said let me just go to the community to see things for myself.”

“I went to the community. I have a farm in the community. Our means of livelihood is farming and fishing. I have my workers that are working for me. Only for me to reach there and notice that all my farm and I can’t even recognize my farm any longer. As we are speaking I don’t have a farm again.”

“This bulldozer from Winsko Services Limited has destroyed everything. I don’t have anything; not just my own farm, we have a cooperative farm in that Community. The cooperative farm has gone. We don’t have a cooperative farm any longer. They’ve destroyed it.”

“We have the palm trees where we make palm oil. Today, we don’t have such again and I don’t know that company that is working there.”

He appealed to the relevant authorities to wade into the matter and rescue the situation, warning that the encroach and destruction of the Community’s ancestral lands, cash crops, economic trees, farm lands, and their means of livelihood is a threat to peace in the area.