The Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt on Tuesday adjourned till November 24 hearing in a suit filed by O-Ela Obor Eleme seeking to include married-out daughters of the host communities of Indorama Eleme Chemicals and Fertiliser Company Limited in the sharing of the dividends paid by the company to host communities. O-Ela Obor Eleme is the general assembly of Eleme people in Rivers State.
When the matter was called up, counsel to the defendants told the court that they had just been served the papers and would need more time to reply to the claims of the plaintiffs.
The judge, Hon. Justice Stephen Pam, adjourned the matter to November 24 to enable counsel to the defendants reply to the claims of the plaintiffs.
In the suit, the incorporated trustees of O-Ela Obor Eleme are praying the court to declare that the continued denial of payments of dividends and economic benefits to daughters of Indorama Host Communities who were married out amount to discrimination and a violation of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
O-Ela Obor Eleme in the papers filed in court contended that as daughters of Indorama host communities, the daughters who were married out were entitled to the dividends accruing from the investment of the host communities in Indorama.
O-Ela Obor therefore urged the court to forthwith recognize the women’s rights to the dividends and order that all outstanding and future dividends due to the affected daughters of Indorama host communities be paid to them.
The organization also prayed the court to order the host communities to render the full account of all dividends declared and distributed to host communities from 2012 to date.
Defendants in the suit are Indorama Eleme Chemicals and Fertiliser Company Limited, the Bureau of Public Enterprise, Elano Investments Limited and chiefs and leaders of Aleto, Okerewa, Akpakpan, Njuru and Agbonchia communities.
Since 2012, Indorama has been paying 7.5 percent of its dividends to the host communities, which have amounted to tens of billions of naira. While the dividends are shared to men, their wives and children that are married within the communities, the indigenous women that had married out of the communities have not been paid any dividend.
O-Ela Obor Eleme argued that the women had not lost their indigeneship of the host communities simply because they married out of the communities.
