But for the ‘Meet-the-People’ tours recently embarked upon by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa to the grassroots areas of Delta State, perhaps the stories from those areas at this time would have been those of bloody reprisals between herdsmen and rural dwellers who say they have had it up to their neck. For long these grassroots dwellers have endured the destruction of their farmlands as well as lives and property by the herdsmen who now occupy their lands. But just as they were gearing up to take the law into their hands, the governor’s tour offered them opportunity to vent their anger and probably have a rethink, thereby averting an impending catastrophe.
In virtually all the places where the governor held town-hall meetings, the people lamented over the negative effects of the activities of herdsmen, saying the menace of the herdsmen was a monster that needed to be tamed.
From Ethiope West and Sapele LGAs where this reporter was on ground to cover the tour and town-hall meetings, cries against herdsmen attacks on rural farmers kept re-echoing.
The governor is expected to go round the 25 local council areas to inspect, commission projects, and meet with the people to interact with them on issues of governance in the state.
Findings from the areas the governor has toured so far revealed a people who are grateful for the democratic dividends they have reaped from the present administration in the state in terms of economic empowerment and provision of infrastructure. However, like the proverbial Oliver Twist, they want some more, especially with regard to the menace of the herdsmen in the state.
Solomon Golley, chairman, Ethiope West LGA, lamented that in recent times the activities of cattle rearers have become a cause for serious concern.
“The uncontrolled grazing by cattle had led to wanton destruction of farmlands resulting to hunger and poverty of local farmers in the LGA. Ethiope West LGA is an agrarian society and majority of the people solely depend on farming as their occupation. Herdsmen deliberately allow their cattle to graze indiscriminately on cultivated lands and this act had angered farmers, which had led to friction between farmers and cattle herdsmen,” Golley said.
“Recently, there was fracas between farmers and herdsmen along Edo-Delta Farm Zone which led to loss of some lives. Farmers have abandoned their farmlands for fear of being raped, molested or killed by the marauding herdsmen. This had led to geometrical upsurge in violence and poverty. If this trend is not properly handled, it could lead to increase in crime waves,” he said.
In an address presented during the town-hall meeting held at James Ibori Civic Centre, Oghara, Golley said considering the security threat posed by the cattle grazing activities, the LGA had held various peace initiatives in the past in collaboration with security agencies and community leaders to have a peaceful co-existence between the local farmers and the herdsmen, but that the herdsmen had stubbornly failed to adhere to the agreement. As such, the LG peace and security committee in its sitting of Friday, April 7, 2017, unanimously resolved that nomadic cattle grazing activities should be prohibited within the LGA with immediate effect, he said.
Okakuro Onome, president-general of Okpe Union Worldwide, in his speech in Sapele, amongst other demands for his people, decried hunger in the land and asked for the governor’s intervention.
More persons who were privileged to ask questions or make contributions also made pathetic appeal to the governor.
In response, Gov Okowa regretted that herdsmen/farmers clashes have become a serious problem against his administration’s drive for massive farming and food security. According to him, the problem had topped the issues in the security meetings that were held across most of the local government areas.
In his efforts to calm frayed nerves, the governor informed the people that even his own village was not spared by the attackers. He also reasoned that solution to the challenges does not lie in seizing and killing the herdsmen, but rather that a more lasting solution would be one with a national outlook.
“Wherever we’ve gone, starting from Isoko areas (north and south), it has been the issue from our security meetings but we had a very major issue in Abraka and in Osisa,” Okowa said.
He pointed out that Deltans have done their best to accommodate other people in their state and thus appreciated them for that, but noted that the issue was not just about Delta State but a national issue as other states were equally having the same experience.
While commending Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture, for his recent comment that the armed herdsmen that have been attacking Nigerians came from outside the country, Okowa stressed the need for Nigeria as a country to have a direct policy concerning the issue of grazing and the rules involved in grazing.
“A situation where herdsmen are armed is not something that is tolerable and it is causing a lot of problems in this nation. A nation must have a direct policy on what they want to do and they must do everything within their reach to avoid a situation where people just move with their cattle from their country into our country Nigeria because Nigerians are no longer safe,” he said.
“As I speak to you, I’m aware of this situation. I’ve talked with my colleagues; we’ve talked about it in the Economic Council. It has been a major issue. All states are involved and it has been very terrible. I thank us for what we are doing but in this state, we have taken some actions. At the moment, the Commissioner of Police has been very proactive; he has been working very closely with the DIG in-charge of South-South Zone,” he added.
Okowa informed that a lot of work is ongoing in trying to move the settlements of herdsmen within the very vast land within the Abraka area because the Abraka area has been very much troubled alongside the Osisa area in Delta State.
“Many other places are troubled including the Ovurie area. There is no community spared, even my own direct village has not been spared. But we want to take proactive actions and begin to talk more on this at the national level so that they know that it is not possible for us to continue to tolerate the situation in which we have found ourselves at the moment,” he said.
He pleaded with the people that the way out was not to seize the herdsmen and to kill them, promising that necessary steps would be taken to ensure that the herdsmen are gradually taken out of our various bushes as much as is humanly possible.
“I want to reassure you on this and we will gradually see what we can do in the next few months concerning this,” Okowa said.
The governor used the occasion to showcase his administration’s achievements in its two years in office. He recalled how his administration at inception two years back made promises to empower the youths but regretted that the state had experienced tough times in the past 17 months occasioned by harsh economic situation in the country and especially in Delta State where 80 percent of deadly attacks led to oil pipelines and facilities vandalism.
He told the people that so far his administration has been able to engage 2,300 youths in the youth agricultural programme and the skills training and entrepreneurship programme in the last two years, realizing it would be difficult to engage more people in government as the civil service is already saturated.
Employment into government, he said, would only be possible when government is through with documenting the number of people working with government to ascertain the exact number of workers and have ghost workers weeded off.
He spoke about the partnership the state has with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the CBN Anchor Borrower’s Programme and said that out of 30,000 farmers that applied for the programme, only 4,000 farmers were found fit to participate in the programme despite that the state had been one of the few states in the South that were first selected for the programme. He attributed the farmers’ low participation in the programme to poor documentation either in terms of their finances or the cooperative groups that they have had.
At the moment, just a little over 4,000 have been found qualified for that programme whereas in states like Zamfara over 40,000 farmers are in that programme, he stressed.
“The programme is not that it is free but the inputs that are given to you for farming are such that they provide you all that you need and at the end of the day there is somebody to buy off all your produce from you, so you get your gain. So, you don’t suffer any loss at any moment because there is plenty of gain at it,” he explained.
“The programme is at a 9 percent interest rate which is less than 1 percent a month. And that is actually working in the North because a lot of states in the North are engaged in it,” he said.
Okowa said he had asked those in government to continue to collaborate with the people who have formed themselves into groups so that they are enlightened on what they require through the Ministry of Agriculture ahead of the second phase of the programme so that the state could have so many of its farmers benefit from the programme.
Still on farming, Okowa recalled that in the first year of his tenure, the state had supported farmers with various inputs, adding that he was sure farmers in the state benefitted from that programme.
MERCY ENOCH, Asaba
