No fewer than six farmers, traders and passengers have been gruesomely murdered in the last two weeks at Arimogija and Molege axis of Ose Local Government Area of Ondo state by suspected armed herdsmen which villagers called terrorists.
Narrating the ordeal, a community leader, Mr. Owolafe Folorunsho said the February 2, 2023 attack was triggered by effort by farmers to repel the continued wanton destruction of their crops by the herdsmen.
According to him, “the herders have continued to invade our farmlands at night, harvest our crops to feed their Cows and in many occasions, they will come during the day, forced us to uproot the Cassava by ourselves at gunpoint, command us to cut them into pieces to feed their cows”.
“In order not to take laws into our hands, we reported this act of economic sabotage to the appropriate authority who took prompt action to chase them out of the farming areas only for the Fulani herdsmen to come back and attacked us with AK-47, Pump Action, Axes and Cutlasses and killed our people at night.”
According to him, in a broad daylight, the terrorists laid ambush, attacked some traders coming from Akure & killed all the occupants before taking their money and set the car ablaze.
Confirming the incidence, the Onimoru of Imoru, Oba Rotimi Obamuwagun lamented the atrocities of the Fulani herdsmen in the area.
Expressing his disgust about the criminal activities of the herdsmen in his domain, the first class monarch narrated how Fulanis completely destroyed four hectres of Cassava farm belonging to one of his subject who borrowed money high interest rate from a commercial bank to finance farm.
This was corroborated by the Odibiado of Ijagba, Oba Andrew Ikioya Ilevare added that the bandits have now resulted to harvesting plantains and bring them to market to sell.
The royal fathers who queried why should federal government allow the killer herdsmen to go about with AK-47 rifles and other dangerous weapons to freely terrorize innocent people, praised the Governor of Ondo state, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu SAN for the establishment of the Southwest Security Network popularly known as Amotekun to checkmate the excesses of the herders especially in the area.
Visiting the troubled villages to commensurate the families of the victims, the Executive Chairman of the local government, Prince Adekunle Dennis expressed the worries and concern of the Governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu SAN (CON) over the security situation in Ose saying, something will be done urgently to checkmate the excesses of the herdsmen.
As he puts it, the council is meeting with the relevant authorities and stakeholders with the aim of redesigning the security architecture of all the flashpoints to nip the security challenges in the bud.
While calling on the community leaders and youth organizations to be more security conscious, the council boss charged them to improve on intelligence information gathering that will enable them give give correct and useful information to the security agencies as government cannot do it all alone.
He equally advised them to thoroughly profile and search themselves with a view to fishing out informants who may be living among them.
While commending the security agencies especially the Army, the Police, DSS and Amotekun Corps for a job well done, the chairman said their timely intervention and prompt actions prevented the terrorists from whipping the people of Arimogija from the surface of the earth.
He concluded but charging them to intensify efforts to recover the four camps, Molege, Ugboruwen, Elerinta and Adedigba from the terrorists.
Report says many houses, cars and motorcycles were burnt during the attack while the families of the victims killed some cows to fight back.
