Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan
Yoruba socio-cultural group, Council of Yoruba Elders (CYE), yesterday raised an alarm over what it described as recent reoccurrence of security challenges in the South-west region of the country, calling for urgent intervention of the President Bola Tinubu’s government.
This is just as it condemned the high cost of food items and other essential commodities “which has made life more unbearable for Nigerians.”
The Secretary General of the group, Dr. Victor Taiwo, while addressing journalists in Ibadan, Oyo State yesterday, said the group is inundated daily with reports of herdsmen attacks on farmers, ravaging of plantation fields, abductions of people for ransom by bandits and indiscriminate killings of people, most especially in Ondo and Oyo States respectively, lamenting that the attacks have become nightmare to the people.
According to him, “The people of the region heaved a sigh of relief when they witnessed the reduction in the menace immediately after the government changed hands on May 29,” stating that what they are witnessing now is resurgence in a high profile and an understatement that armed robbers are literally on the rampage in the region.
He said: “You can imagine that widely published sad occurrence of gruesome murder of a 62-year-old grandmother, Iyanuoluwa Adamolekun, of Similoluwa area, Agbaluku Arigidi Akoko in Ondo State. We also have in our record the kidnap incidents in Saki, Okaka and Ipapo, Oke-ogun axis of Oyo State . So, within a month, we have Fulani herders’ attacks on farmers in Afon, Ipokia, Ogun State, Iwere-Ile, Komu and Otu in Oyo State.
“We also heard about the killing of Rev. David Musa of the ECWA in Obajana, Kogi State, on October 14, 2023, and also the abduction of about 15 church members in Ondo State in September. All these challenges should be critically looked into by the president before it escalates into something else.”
On the level of inflation in the country, Taiwo blamed it on insecurity issues across the country and the fuel subsidy removal.
He noted that attacks on farmers in the Southwest region and the fuel subsidy removal resulted in high cost of food items in the markets, stating that the Fulani herders through series of attacks are preventing farmers from freely accessing their farms and this naturally led to a deficit in food items and high costs of food items.
According to him, “The high cost of transportation due to the removal of fuel subsidy has also contributed a lot to the high cost of essential commodities in our markets and Nigerians are finding it so difficult to maintain their three square meals on daily basis.
“We reviewed the state of the economy and it is very lamentable that what the suffering masses are passing through is fast becoming unbearable so much that the rate of deaths by suicide due to hunger and hopelessness is quite unprecedented in the history of this country. The rate at which inflation on foods and general goods and services is sky rocketing is very much disturbing to the nerves so much that deaths by hunger are no more news to the ear.”
Taiwo added that the rate of unemployment in the country has become paradoxically a norm and terribly alarming, noting that out of sheer hopelessness for the youths at securing employments they find solace or alternative means of survival in yahoo businesses, kidnapping of their fellow citizens for ransom and several other criminal activities.
He maintained that since the removal of fuel subsidy by the government the loop effect has been too much telling on the general economic life of the people, stating that all efforts by the government to ease the hardship have not effected any positive change in the lives of the people but rather excruciating agony.
“Now, as the new voice for the Yoruba people of Yorubaland, we cannot feign ignorance of the cries our people are inundating us with on daily basis. What is, therefore, the way out for our people in Yorubaland suffering in the midst of plenty? So, we are using this opportunity to call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to find a lasting solution to all these issues at hand for our people to truly have rest of mind,” he added.
