The Afenifere Renewal Group has called on governors in the South-West to urgently devise plans to check the killer herdsmen on the rampage across the country before their activities engulf the geopolitical zone.
This is just as the Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, declared support for the call by Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, for an organised resistance against the killer herdsmen.
In a statement on Wednesday by the group’s National Chairman, Mr. Olawale Oshun, the ARG said it was vital for the governors to wake up to their responsibilities, adding that to do otherwise would be tantamount to courting historical and electoral disaster.
It stated, “Yoruba governors must now come together to find a lasting solution to the marauding herdsmen. They are now causing mayhem in Ekiti, Ondo and Ogun states and we need not wait until they overrun all our territories before waking from our slumber.
“Two months ago, we had cause to alert all the Yoruba governors and their state governments to the need to be proactive to the Fulani herdsmen’s potential to overrun parts of the South-West in the purported but false search for food for their cattle.
“We had in seeking that our governors pay attention to the unfolding herdsmen drama been worried by their silence, a silence that in many quarters of Yorubaland is now interpreted as self-serving and cowardly.”
According to the ARG, now that the chickens have come home to roost with real attacks in at least three of the South-West states, it is hoped that the governors will see the need to be prepared to prevent further unwarranted attacks on their people by “a terrorist group which though widely disclaimed by the nationality they belong to but emboldened by the callous indifference of those who have the power to intervene.’’
Noting that as Nigerians with a desire to keep the country united, the group said it was the responsibility of all nationalities comprising Nigeria to keep it united.
Also, Fayose has called on governors in all states affected by the herdsmen menace to adopt Soyinka’s suggestion to protect their citizens.
Fayose, according to a statement on Wednesday, by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said he was particularly happy that notable leaders in the country, especially Soyinka heeded his call for all men of good conscience to speak up against the wanton killings of Nigerians by herdsmen, who were acting more like terrorists.
Fayose stated that his state would further strengthen the local hunters by formally bringing them together under the Ekiti State Hunters Association and equipping them to protect our people and their sources of livelihood.
He said, “What Nigeria is witnessing now is pure criminality. It is terrorism in the name of cattle rearing and anyone defending the killing of fellow Nigerians and destruction of farmlands is an enemy of this country.
“If our people have decided to embrace farming, how do we reconcile a situation where their farms are either being destroyed by cows or cruelly set ablaze by supposed herdsmen?