"ERA/FoEN’s RSPO Certification Claims Spurious, Libelous—Okomu Oil"

The management of Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc has reacted to an allegation made against it by a group known as Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), alleging that the company had been “parading” a Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil(RSPO) certificate.

In a statement signed by its Managing Director, Mr GD Hefer, the Benin-City, Edo State-based agro firm categorically denied “this allegation and dismiss this assertion as false, defamatory and without foundation.” Okomu Oil tasked the NGO to “immediately furnish the requisite proof that the company had been doing so or face the consequences.”

“It is strange that ERA/FoEN, which had originally been invited to participate as a stakeholder in the RSPO National Interpretation exercise, along with other interested and affected stakeholders in the oil palm pipeline, chose to decline the invitation, publicly stating that they were against RSPO in all its forms and calling it ‘false land grabbing and inhumane activities against communities,’ but suddenly now seemingly wanting to take an active interest in the RSPO certification scheme,” the statement said.