The Chairman, Oshimili North Local Government Area of Delta State, Mr Louis Ndukwe, has insisted that the order issued to the herdsmen residing in the bushes to vacate within seven days remained sacrosanct.
Ndukwe said the order was informed by recent security challenges including the alarming rate of kidnappings, killings, maiming among others, believed to be perpetrated by elements who had their hideouts in the bushes.
The council boss said the aim of the executive order was not to antagonise anybody within the locality but only to clear the bushes where heinous crimes were being committed.
He said, “We have asked them to come out of the bush and live with us in the town. After the expiration of the seven days, we will start by demolishing all their camps which are the hideouts of these criminals and we will make them to face the wrath of the law.
“We have not asked them to leave the local government but to come out of the bush and live socially and economically with us in the towns and villages. Our government is people-friendly and the people of Anioma are very friendly too.”
He said the seven-day ultimatum had not changed, insisting that at the end of the ultimatum, “we are going to come down heavily on the defaulters who refused to vacate the bushes. We have communicated with our traditional rulers and security agencies.”
But the Fulani residents have described the executive order evicting them from the bushes within the council as draconian.
Speaking on behalf of Fulani residents, the Public Relations Officer of the Muslim Lawyers Association of Nigeria, Delta State branch, Mr Idris Abubakar, said the notice to quit would boomerang and cause more havoc than it intended to cure if the leadership of the council went ahead to forcefully evict them from the bushes at the end of the seven-day ultimatum.
Abubakar said the council chairman acted out of his own volition, saying that the state governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, can never give his nod to “such a draconian law. That law is null and void.
