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The Southern Senators Forum (SSF), has commended the Governors from the Region, for outrightly taking a firm position on burning national issues, including the banning of open grazing of cattle, as insecurity continues to take a toll on the country and subjecting many to kidnapping and killings.
The Senators submitted that such deft and unanimous policy would help in reining in those hiding under the cattle grazing, to unleash terror of kidnapping and killing on the residents of the region.
The Southern Governors Forum (SGF), had at its meeting held in Asaba, Delta State on Tuesday, unanimously passed a verdict prohibiting open grazing in the region, to checkmate herders-farmers clashes and senseless kidnapping as well as killings of Nigerians of southern extraction.
A statement jointly signed by the SSF Chairman, Senators Opeyemi Bamidele (Ekiti), Secretary-General, Mathew Uroghide (Edo and the Publicity Secretary,
Chukwuka Utazi (Enugu) and made available to journalists in Abuja and Ado Ekiti, on Wednesday, appaluded the step taken by the Governors, saying it would serve as a buffer to wanton destruction of farmlands, kidnappings, and carnages.
The Senators lamented how the Southern farmers were losing Hundreds of millions of Naira to plundering of food crops, through encroachments on farmlands and exposing the region to famine and acute food scarcity.
They said: “At this critical point of our national life when the economy was bedeviled by galloping inflation, youth unemployment, and insecurity, food security is very crucial to mitigate the effects of these diverse evils on the citizens.
“Available records have also shown that attaining food security status, would remain a mirage in the south owing to ravaging effect of outdated livestock grazing policy being unleashed on farmlands by some unscrupulous herders.
“Most appalling were the seemingly unabated kidnapping , raping, and killing of our people by suspected herdsmen, who have become bandits thus heating up the system.
“With this unanimous resolve by our Governors to initiate no-open grazing policy, the region will return to its peaceful and agriculturally self -sufficient status it had assumed even long before Nigeria’s amalgamation in 1914”.
Bamidele, Uroghide, and Utazi, saluted the Governors for ruminating on the expediency and the need for speedy restructuring of the highly lopsided Nigerian nation, saying this will also help to remove the venom that had permeated the land on account of alleged neglect of certain sections of the country.
The SSF leaders stated that ushering of equality, equity, and justice in the way the country is being run will wipe out ethnic tension, restore peace and stability and ward off agitations for secession that are now gaining traction across the land.
The Southern Senators Forum, then encouraged the Governors to swiftly follow up on their resolutions, by immediately approaching the leadership of the National Assembly, with a view to working with the two arms of the parliament to ensure that their well-articulated positions on the state of the nation, especially as relate to restructuring, State policing and the jettisoning of archaic traditional grazing methods, which fall short of global best practice and a potential threat to our national cohesion and peace, are thoroughly and decisively addressed through the ongoing constitutional review exercise.
