By Our Correspondent

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-A group of farmers under the auspice of the United Farmers having their farms adjacent to the Papalanto Plants of the Multinational cement manufacturer , Lafarge Africa Plc have drag the company to court.

The farmers in SUIT NO FHC/L/CS/1283/2016 filed at the Federal High Court Lagos by their Counsel Iyaniwura, Adebisi of ‘BISI IYANIWURA & CO alleges that Larfarge had recklessly and negligently been discharging waste water from their plants on their farms for some years now, thereby destroying the farms and their crops affecting negatively their source of livelihood.

The farmers in their court processes also claim that some Lafarge officials are insisting that they will not be compensated by the company unless they do away with the services of their lawyers.

In the said suit presently before Justice Jude Dagat, the farmers joined the Federal Ministry of Environment as 2nd Defendant for their refusal to release a copy of the Report of the laboratory analysis of specimens taken from the site of the incidence carried out by a United Nations certified laboratory contrary to earlier undertaken to release the said Report to all the parties.

In the suit, the farmers are claiming slightly over N100 Million as damages and asking the Court to order the Federal Ministry of Environment to release and handover a copy of the laboratory report to them and forward said Report to the National Environmental Standards and Regulatory Enforcement Agency  ( NESREA) for necessary follow up sanctions against Lafarge.

At the time of filling in this report efforts by InvestAdvocate to get Ade Ojolowo, manager, Corporate Communications  of the company for comments proved abortive as he has promised a couple of times to revert and give their own side of the story, but  up until now no official response.