Farmers, herders’crisis: Ebonyi council boss insists on profiling

The chairman of Onicha local government area, Ebonyi state, Engr. Felix Ogbonnaya Igboke, Friday said in order to ensure harmony between farmers and herdsmen in the area, he had re-launched an “aggressive profiling of herdsmen” resident in the area.

Igboke, who stated this shortly after a security meeting held in the area, stressed that the profiling which followed the directive of Governor David Nweze Umahi to avoid the clashes as witnessed in other parts of the country.

He said by constantly engaging herdsmen in a given area, it would provide the opportunity to know their influx and exit, adding that “by so doing the activities of the herdsmen would be brought under control, with recourse on the existing law.” 

He said, “The profiling we are talking about will help us a lot because we have looked and sometimes you do not know where they settle until problems arise.

“It is not easy to deal with this people because whenever you call for such meetings it is always their leaders that will come and we have been emphasising it that whenever we call such meeting, they should equally go and call meeting of their people, the laborers and tell them the decisions of government.

“Our governor has done so much on this issue of herdsmen to the extent of even bringing down the national president of Myetti Allah for a town hall meeting here in Ebonyi state and there is a law that regulates farmers and herdsmen in the state which the national chairman of Myetti Allah leadership signed.

“One of these laws is that they are not allowed to migrate at night. Again is that they are not also allowed to migrate on foot to any place at all in the state. If you are coming into the state, you will have to notify the state government, the security agencies that you are coming from so so place and you are settling at so so place among other laws.”

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