• Igbo youths serve herders 48-hour quit notice
From Stanley Uzoaru, Owerri
Herdsmen have invaded some communities in Imo State with their cows destroying huge amount of food crops.
The communities affected according to their leaders are Obosa and Assa in the Ohaji/ Egbema Local Government Area, and Ndegwu, Orogwe and Amakohia-Ubi, in Owerri West council.
Residents of the communities who are predominantly farmers, have pleaded with the state governor, Hope Uzodimma, and the state Commissioner of Police, Muhammed Berde, to come to their rescue.
The residents said the herdsmen had been occupying their farmlands since March, lamenting that they had lost a lot of farm produce to the invaders.
The chairman of Obosa, Assa Community Security Committee, Monday Oparaji, a retired police officer, said the herders had increased tension in the community with their continuous occupation of their farmlands.
He called on the government to order the herders to vacate their farmlands and stop intimidating their wives and daughters.
Similarly, the President General of Ndegwu community, Ozichukwu Iroegbulam, has appealed to the state governor to intervene before the matter got out of hand.
“We are begging His Excellency to come to our rescue and take care of this situation before it becomes herders- farmers clash.
“Enough is a enough; the Commissioner of Police should quickly come to our aid; a lot of our crops are being damaged and our women are afraid to go to their farms; we do not want to take the laws into our own hands,” Iroegbulam lamented.
Meanwhile, Igbo youths under the aegis of the Coalition of South East Youth Leaders (COSEYL) have given a 48- hour ultimatum to the herdsmen to vacate the affected communities.
President General of the Igbo youth group, Goodluck Ibem, who disclosed this in a statement he issued to newsmen at the weekend also warned against open grazing in the South East. He regretted that the action of the herders had brought untold hardship and famine in most part of the South East.
Ibem said: “Open grazing has been banned a long time ago; anyone or group of persons still involved in such outdated practice is on a wicked mission of taking the ancestral lands of the community they are staying on.”