By Innocent Okoh
The anti-open-grazing law which has been passed in some southern states of Nigeria, will soon be passed to law in Edo state as the state assembly on Tuesday received Twenty-four copy of the bill for a law to prohibit open grazing of cattle and other livestock in the state, forwarded to the house by the state governor, Godwin Obaseki.
Speaker, of the state House of Assembly, Marcus Onobun disclosed this on Tuesday, he said the long awaited bill is expedient after receiving inputs from different stakeholders on issues of open grazing and other related matters.
In the past and recently, communities have been sacked following incessant attacks by suspected armed herdsmen, lives have been lost, farmers maimed, women raped by the suspected herders and crops worth millions of naira have also been destroyed by cattle.
Just on Tuesday in Benin city, natives of communities in Ovia South West Local Government Area of Edo State staged a peaceful protest to appeal to governor Godwin Obaseki to save them from “killer herders.”
The residents who matched to the secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Edo State council, carried placards with various inscriptions as: ‘Obaseki, wake up. It is not cows that voted for you’; ‘Sorrow, pains, hunger, tears in our land’; ‘Owners of cows are owners of AK-47’, etc.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time residents of the state especially farmers have protest the incessant invasion and killing of natives of Edo communities by herdsmen. But with the passing of the bill to law in the state, the invasion and killings will stop.
Credit: Urban Scoop Media.