The governorship candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) in Ogun State, Hon. Adekunle Akinlade, has faulted a claim by the Ogun State Government that Yewa residents relocating to Benin Republic as a result of herdsmen crisis are not Nigerians, but Hohoris and Eguns.
In an attempt to say no indigene of Yewa North had become a refugee in Benin Republic, the Chairman of Ogun State Peace Keeping Committee on Farmers/Herders Conflict, Hon. Kayode Oladele had stated that the Hohoris and Eguns “are not actually the original indigenes of Yewa, they are the people from the other side of the border.”
Oladele said the people were in the Yewa axis of Ogun State to lease farmlands, adding that they only relocated to their home country as a result of the herders/farmers clashes in the area.
But, Akinlade said, “If the statement credited to my big brother and fellow Yewa man, Hon. Kayode Oladele is true, then I am compelled to say that the Ogun State Committee Chairman on herdsmen/farmers reconciliation got it wrong.”
Akinlade, who is also a Yewa indigene like the peace committee chairman, maintained that the claim by Oladele that the Egun and Hohori people in Yewa land are foreigners from neighbouring Benin Republic, who only come to farm in Yewa land “is a gross misrepresentation of the fact.”
In a statement made available to DAILY POST on Monday by his media aide, Azeez Adelani, Akinlade explained that “Ogun West consists of various ethnic groups such as the Ketus, Anagos, Aworis, Eyos, Eguns, Hohoris, to mention a few. Historically, they all farm, trade and transact businesses across the land-borders with Nigerian bordering states.”
The APC chieftain added that, “It is pertinent that we measure statements that tend to suggest that the fact that our people are being displaced or forced into exile is false. I am sure my brother will agree with me that lives have been lost, people displaced, farms destroyed and many are being threatened on a daily basis.
“The challenge here is that we allow ourselves to be used as a cosmetic brush rather than request for real solutions. The herdsmen crisis is not peculiar to Yewa land but a National and sub-regional African problem that requires a global solution.
“For anyone to set up a fact-finding Committee to ‘find out what happened, what was lost, and how this will not happen again’ is to say that we all do not know the importance of blood in the body.
“At our micro level, the Ogun State government should sit down with experts to deploy an EARLY WARNING, EARLY RESPONSE infrastructure around Yewa North and Imeko Afon areas of Ogun West.”
DAILY POST reports that a young lady identified as Elizabeth Pascal was hacked to death on Monday by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Imeko Afon Local Government Area, at a time she was coming back from the stream.