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Ogun community seeks govt intervention over killings by suspected herdsmen

By Charles Coffie Gyamfi, Abeokuta
10 February 2015   |   6:08 pm
FOR the umpteenth time, the Ketu community in Yewa North local council area of Ogun State has cried out to the state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, to save them from what they described as “wanton killings of their kinsmen.”    According to the community’s leaders, who spoke through a strongly worded statement in Abeokuta on…

Fulani-Herdsmen

FOR the umpteenth time, the Ketu community in Yewa North local council area of Ogun State has cried out to the state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, to save them from what they described as “wanton killings of their kinsmen.”

   According to the community’s leaders, who spoke through a strongly worded statement in Abeokuta on Monday, within the last few years, more than 25 of their kinsmen have been hacked to death, either through gunshots or machetes by Fulani herdsmen.

   The victims are mostly farmers who attempt to prevent the herdsmen’s cows from grazing on their farmland. The women among them are always allegedly raped before being killed. They claim the incidents occur yearly during the dry season when herdsmen find it difficult to find green pastures for their flock.

   The latest of such killings, according to the statement signed by Mr. Kunle Abiose and Mr. Joseph Bankole, coordinator and secretary of Ketu Advance Front (KAF) respectively, is Mrs. Ayesi Balogun, a mother of three who was raped and hacked to death on her farm at Asa at the weekend.

   The statement, a copy of which was dispatched to the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), read: “For the umpteenth time, we members of Ketu Advancement Front (KAF) want to register our strongest protest with the government of Senator Ibikunle Amosun over her callous abdication of her constitutional responsibility of ensuring the security of lives of Ketu People from wanton killing by marauding herdsmen.

   Explaining how Balogun was killed, KAF disclosed: “On sighting her entering the farm, the killer-herdsmen, who had taken over her farm pounced on her, probably gang raped her before hacking her to death.

   Mrs. Balogun’s case, the statement indicated, brings to over 25 the number of innocent people who had been sent to their early graves in seriously agonising and dehumanising circumstances, “not to talk of several others who had been maimed.

   “Our displeasure is premised on the fact that despite our unrelenting protest, including the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with government and the herdsmen in 2014, the government, which has the overall duty of security and peace of our people has turned deaf ears and blind eyes to our plight.

   “Not even our strong and repeated demands for the implementation of the MoU as an instrument of peace endorsed by all parties had moved government a bit to perform its constitutional duty,” the statement noted.

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