Metro

Unrelenting, Fayose inaugurates officers to arrest herdsmen

Published

8 years ago

October 20, 2016

Unrelenting, Fayose inaugurates officers to arrest herdsmen

Ekiti State governor Ayodele Fayose has demonstrated his seriousness over checkmating the activities of dreaded Fulani herdsmen as he has inaugurated the Ekiti Grazing Enforcement Marshals.

The officers, who were inaugurated on Thursday in Ado-Ekiti, although are not to carry arms, are said to have been trained and equipped to complement the police and other security agencies to tackle recalcitrant armed herdsmen in the state according to the governor.

The marshals have the mandate to arrest any cattle found grazing after 6pm.

In a press statement through Lere Olayinka, Fayose’s Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, the governor insisted that there must be a stop to the killing of innocent people and destruction of their farmlands and properties, adding that 10,000 cattle could not compensate for the life of human being lost to conflict between herdsmen and local farmers.

‎”We have a right to life and to survive and holding things for our survival especially peasant farmers, whose means of livelihood are taken away by cattle feeding on their crops.‎ If a man is helpless and is depending on peasant farming and the gains of the farming are taken away in a jiffy, that is condemnable.‎

“I’m going to stand in the gap to bring to a permanent end, the situation whereby some people take away the means of livelihood of others.

“It is only when you have peace that your business can be peaceful. Police can only do a bit if they have information. We have taken it upon ourselves to champion this course of grazing control because no responsible leader will sit back and watch when his people are being killed, their wives and daughters being raped and their sources of livelihood being destroyed under the guise of cattle rearing,” he said.

The governor had on August 29 signed a grazing law entitled, “Prohibition of Cattle and Other Ruminants Grazing in Ekiti, 2016.” Anyone who is found guilty of that law upon conviction is liable to a sis-month imprisonment without an option of fine.

By Ebere Ndukwu …

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