A former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbe, has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to consider the creation of state police to end the current security challenges in the country.
Ogbe also urged the President to revoke the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocol on Free Movement which Nigeria signed and which allows herders from other West African countries to enter Nigeria with cows and camels to graze.
The former minister spoke yesterday in Abuja at the launch of Young Women in Agriculture (YWA) Champion in Nigeria organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Read and Earn Federation (UNESCO-REF) under its Strategic Intervention Programme-ALPHA (SIP-ALPHA).
He said,
“There is no scientific approach to the issue of insecurity. I think government should have organised workshops for people to bring more facts and figures about what they know to deal with the matter.
“Perhaps, for the issue of state police to be able to come on board, local people know who the bandits and troublemakers are, except the foreign ones who come in because of agreement that has been signed about moving in here from West African countries to graze.
“Have you ever seen a copy of that agreement? It is wrong. It should be revoked.
“You can’t say cows from Mauritania, Mali, Senegal can come into Nigeria to graze. Many of them come well-armed. When they see so much grass here, they don’t want to go back.
“Some of them see that the solution is to kill all the local farmers and tale over their land. It is wrong. That is the plain truth, and nobody seems to want to address it.
“They have to cancel that agreement. I will personally present a copy of that agreement to President Tinubu to see and tell every West African country to design their own ranches, grow their own grasses, let their cows stay there and feed there.”
“The Nigerian indigenous Fulani men have never been the problem. If they had a problem with a farm, they pay the penalty.
“Now, they are armed with AK-47 and want to wipe out entire population and take their land. That can’t be. Let each country appeal to the World Bank, the World Food Organization (WHO) or the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for support for them to grow their own grass and irrigate them and keep their cows there”.
