FORMER Governor of the state, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has finally broken his silence on the farmer/herder crisis that has become a menace in the Southwest region of the country.
Reacting to the vexed problem, Tinubu cautioned herdsmen against being tactless adding that “careless words” would not shield them from what he described as “relentless reality”.
Tinubu’s reaction was contained in a statement he signed and issued to newsmen today in Lagos.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain identified alienation coupled with incomplete understanding of the modern socio-economic and environmental forces as some of the factors responsible for the aggression of the herdsmen.
The statement read in.part, “The herder-farmer dispute has taken on acute and violent dimensions. It has cost too many innocent lives while destroying the property and livelihoods of many others. It has also aggravated ethnic sentiment and political tension.
“Despite the efforts of some of those in positions of high responsibility and public trust, the crisis has not significantly abated.
“The calamity now being faced is borne of situational exigencies. It is but the tragic outcome when often desperate, alienated people are left too long unattended and when their understanding of the modern socio-economic and environmental forces affecting the very terms of their existence is incomplete.
“An ethnically fuelled response will be to vociferously defend the nomadic way believing this tack will somehow protect the herder and cast the speaker as an ethnic champion.
“However, careless words cannot shield the herder from relentless reality. Such talk will only delude him into believing that he can somehow escape the inevitable.
“We do both herder and farmer grave injustice by allowing the herder to continue as he is – fighting a losing battle against modernity and climate change. In that fight, desperation causes him to flail and fight the farmer, who too is a victim of these impersonal forces.”
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