From Bola Ojuola, Akure
Six persons including farmers, traders and passengers have been killed by gunmen suspected to be herdsmen in the last two weeks at Arimogijaand Molege axis of Ose Local Government Area of Ondo state.
The villagers, mostly farmers who were shocked by the attack labelled the suspected armed herdsmen as terrorists.
A community leader, Owolafe Folorunsho said some gunmen attacked the communities on February 2.
He said the attack was triggered by efforts by farmers to repel the continued wanton destruction of their crops by the herdsmen.
According to him, “the herders have continued to invade our farmlands at night, harvest our crops to feed their Cows in many occasions, they will come during the day, forced us to uproot the Cassava by ourselves at gunpoint, command us to cut them into pieces to feed their cows”.
“In order not to take laws into our hands, we reported this act of economic sabotage to the appropriate authority who took prompt action to chase them out of the farming areas only for the Fulani herdsmen to come back and attacked us with AK-47, Pump Action, Axes & Cutlasses and killed our people at night.”
According to him, in a broad daylight, theterrorists laid ambush, attacked some traders coming from Akure and killed all the occupants before taking their money ,also setting the car ablaze.
Confirming the incident, the Onimoru of Imoru, Oba Rotimi Obamuwagun lamented the atrocities of the herdsmen in the area.
He expressed sadness about the criminal activities of the herdsmen in his domain.
This was corroborated by the Odibiado of Ijagba, Oba Andrew Ikioya Ilevare who also said that the bandits have now resulted to harvesting plantains which they bring to the market to sell.
The royal fathers who queried why federalgovernment should allow herdsmen to go about with AK-47 rifles to terrorize innocent people praised the Governor of Ondo state, ArakunrinOluwarotimi Akeredolu SAN for the establishment of the Southwest Security Network popularly known as Amotekun to checkmate the excesses of the herders especially in the area.
The Chairman of the local government, Prince Adekunle Dennis who visited the troubled communities, expressed the concern of the Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu over the security situation in Ose saying, something will be done urgently to checkmate the excesses of the herdsmen.
He said the council is meeting with the relevant authorities and stakeholders with the aim of redesigning the security architecture of all the flashpoints to nip the security challenges in the bud.
While calling on the community leaders and youth organizations to be more security conscious, the council boss charged them to improve on intelligence information gathering that will enable them give give correct and useful information to the security agencies as government cannot do it all alone.
He equally advised them to thoroughly profile and search themselves with a view to fishing out informants who may be living among them.
