Senators react to southern governors resolution to ban open grazing
The Southern Senators’ Forum has commended steps taken by state governors from the region to curb the rising insecurity advising them to swiftly follow up their resolutions by immediately approaching the leadership of the National Assembly.
This is coming after the Southern Governors’ Forum on Tuesday banned open grazing, called for restructuring of the country leading to the evolution of state police, and urged the president to address the nation.
Reacting, the Senators in a statement jointly signed by their Chairman, Secretary-General and Publicity Secretary, Senators Opeyemi Bamidele (APC-Ekiti), Matthew Uroghide (PDP-Edo), and Chukwuka Utazi (PDP-Enugu) lauded the governors for outrightly taking a firm position on burning national issues, including banning the open grazing of cattle.
The senators said that such a unanimous policy would check those hiding under cattle grazing to unleash the terror of kidnapping and killing on the residents of the region.
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The senators lamented how farmers in the region were losing millions of Naira to the plundering of food crops through encroachments on farmlands thereby exposing the region to famine and acute food scarcity.
“At this critical point of our national life when the economy is being 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records have shown that attaining food security status would remain a mirage in the south owing to ravaging effect of outdated livestock grazing policy being unleashed on farmlands by some unscrupulous herders.
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“Most appalling is the seemingly unabated kidnapping, raping and killing of our people by suspected herdsmen, who have become bandits heating up the system.
“With this uniform 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,” the senators stated.
They also saluted the governors for the expediency and the need for speedy restructuring of the country.
They said it would help to remove the incessant agitations over alleged neglect of certain sections of the country.