South-West governors and a pan-Yoruba organisation, Afenifere, have differed over the enforcement of the anti-grazing law by states in the region.
While the state governments insisted that the law had always been implemented in their various states, Afenifere explained that enforcing the already enacted laws would stop the incessant invasion of the herders who often fed their cattle with farm produce of the farmers.
Apart from the Ekiti State Government which enacted the Anti-grazing law in 2016, Osun, Ogun, Oyo, Lagos and Ondo State okayed the law in 2021.
Despite the existing law, herdsmen still engage their cattle in open grazing in the South-West region.
In March 2023, farmers in Ido-Ekiti in Ido-Osi Local Government Area called on Governor Biodun Oyebanji of Ekiti State to enforce the anti-grazing law against invaders of their farms.
However, the state government maintained that the state was implementing the anti-grazing law enacted in the state and that the Herder’s Farmers Peace Committee inaugurated by Governor Biodun Oyebanji was part of the implementation process.
The state Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, Ebenezar Boluwade, added that the state government was meeting with stakeholders to ensure that the committee brought new initiatives and development into the farming community.
In Ondo State, the Special Adviser on Security Matters to the state governor, Adetunji Adeleye revealed that right from its inception in 2020, the law had been effective in the 18 local government areas of the state.
Adeleye, who spoke with Saturday PUNCH, added that several defaulters had been lawfully punished.
He said, “We prosecuted some of the suspects recently, they are going to jail and the standard is that; they will compensate the farmers and pay the government fines as an alternative to going to jail. Initially, we used to have up to 5,000 petitions on the herdsmen destroying farmers farms but we now have less than 100 even as low as 10. So, the law is very much effective in Ondo State.”
In Lagos State Government, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, told one of our correspondents that unlike other states in the region, Lagos was not affected by grazing problems, saying, “One thing you must know is that Lagos is not a state that has the kind of grazing problem that other states have.”
In Ogun State, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Dapo Abiodun, Mr Lekan Adeniran, maintained that the implementation of the anti-open grazing law was the responsibility of the police and other security agencies, noting that it was their duty to enforce any law made by the government.
Meanwhile, Afenifere has called on the six governors from the region to facilitate an immediate enforcement of the anti-grazing law.
The group explained that enforcing the already enacted anti-grazing laws would stop the incessant invasion of the cattle herders who often fed their cattle with the crops and farm produce of farmers.
In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the organisation, Mogaji Gboyega Adejumo, the six governors of Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Lagos, Ondo, and Ekiti States were urged to commit their pledge to the establishment of cattle ranches across the region, saying it would represent “the inimitable values of the Yoruba as a people embedded with the mechanism to resolve even the most difficult of issues with irrepressible ease.”
The statement partly read, “The Afénifére enjoins the six governors of the South-West to, at some point, make a definite pledge to commit to the establishment of cattle ranches across all Yoruba speaking states.
“Also in the same guise, and as a matter of urgency, our governors must do more to protect our farmers, subsistence and commercial, from being preyed upon by the so called “cattle-grazers”, whose intent are very doubtful, and from there mode of operation, are often killers of our people.”
