*announces Oro Festival for cleansing, rallies traditionalists, hunters, ancestral security, farmers for protection
By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
The Agbekoya Reformed Society (ARS) over the weekend has warned the rampaging Fulani herdsmen to immediately stop the killings of innocent farmers and destruction of farmlands in any part of Yorubaland.
ARS while handling down the warning in a statement titled ” The prevailing Political and Security situation in Yorubaland and Nigeria ” signed by its President, Chief Adekunle Oshodi. forthwith! tasked all its members; farmers, hunters, traditionalists and Yoruba ancestral security outfits to commence the total and uncompromising protection of all parts of Yorubaland.
Besides, ARS announced a three-day Oro festival to cleanse the Yoruba territory from incursion of Fulani herdsmen and fish out any threat lurking within the Yorubaland.
According to the Agbekoya in the statement dated January, 26, 2018
“ARS has been watching all these events keenly as they unfold. Our silence is not consent. Neither is our cadence tacit support!” adding that” the Agbekoya stand is premised on its history as a defender of Yoruba society, values and territory’
ARS added “It will be tantamount to self-immolation if Agbekoya rescinds this traditional role to others, thereby exposing the flanks of the Yoruba societies and communities to infringements, incursions and attacks as is presently the case!
” Agbekoya hereby issues a clear and present warning to the Fulani herdsmen that all this nonsense must stop and end forthwith!
Agbekoya now calls out all its members; farmers, hunters, traditionalists and Yoruba ancestral security outfits to commence the total and uncompromising protection of all parts of Yorubaland, from Kwara to Kogi, Lagos to Ondo, Ogun, Osun, Oyo and Ekiti” he said.
Chief Oshodi added in the statement that “our bushes and forests, farmlands and settlements hereby remain impervious and sealed to Fulani marauders, arsonists and murderous gangs”, adding, ” the government of the day has clearly and obviously failed to offer protection to our people in the urban and rural areas.”
Emphasizing that “a three day Oro festival will be conducted all over Yorubaland on an unannounced date to cleanse our land of terror and fish out any threats lurking within our boarders”, it added that
” cattle rearing is private business.”.
“As government had never supported farmers with forcibly acquired land to farm in other peoples communes, neither had government ever seized rivers upcountry for fishermen down south to fish in northern rivers. Thus, it is patently wrong and wholly suspicious when a subsisting government chooses a particular private trade (cattle rearing), mostly conducted by a particular ethnic group (the Fulani) for favour over and above the interests, businesses and lives of other Nigerians.
“It leaves a bad taste in the mouth and a nasty smell to the nostrils when you witness the atrocities committed by these agents of Lucifer, for which not a single arrest, prosecution or sentencing has been done, even after thousands of lives have been lost to this lunacy!”
ARS stressed in the statement that “history and anthropology teaches us that every human group is nomadic in nature, but had settled down somewhere at a particular point in time.” adding, ‘why have the Fulani refused to settle down at, or around, their ancestral lands in the Futa Jalon and Futa Toro highlands of Guinea and Senegal and built modern ranches, in this computer age, to rear their cows without foraging into other peoples territories to disturb their peace? Why?
Agbekola while frowning at yhe grazing bill, declared that the bill “is arrogantly malevolent in content and impetuously contemptuous, in character, of other people’s interests and concerns. In the darkest parts of hell from where it was horribly construed, it shall remain, because it is mortally flawed, morally insensitive and forever unworkable.’
