By Emma Ogbuehi
Ondo State Governor and chairman of Southern Governors Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu, has taken a swipe on his Kaduna State counterpart, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, over the latter’s comment on anti-open grazing law. The governor accused El-Rufai of traying hard to export banditry to the southern part of the country.
El-Rufai had criticised the anti-open grazing laws being signed by some states in the southern part of the country, describing the exercise is not implementable. El-Rufai, who made the remark at the All Progressives Congress (APC) secretariat on the herders/farmers crisis mocked that the crisis at hand goes beyond making populist legislation that does not offer a solution.
“What is unhelpful is the politicizing of the situation and pass legislation that you know that you cannot implement.”
But Akeredolu, in a statement issued by the state Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Donald Ojogo, frowned at the comments credited to El-Rufai, stressing that such should not have come from a leader.
In the statement titled, ‘Anti-open grazing: El-Rufai’s attack on southern governors devious, a hysteric ploy to externalise banditry’, Akeredolu reiterated that the anti-open grazing law, especially in Ondo State, had come to stay, saying, “It shall be zealously guarded and conscionably deployed to protect all residents of Ondo State, notwithstanding their ethnic and religious biases.”
The statement read, “From all indications, Governor Nasir El-Rufai, if he was properly quoted and his views not misrepresented, is struggling hard to export banditry to the South under an expressed opinion that is laced with mischief.
“Perhaps, it is apt to state clearly that the likes of Governor El-Rufai are already in a hysteric ‘mode’ of escalating and indeed, externalising banditry, especially as the military onslaught against criminal elements and other terror variants suffices in the North.
“For emphasis, any such comment like that of the Kaduna Governor, if indeed he made that statement, merely seeks to encourage anarchy under the guise of resentment of a law by affected stakeholders.”
Governor El-Rufai’s Kaduna state has been in the throes of banditry, lately accounting for losses in life and property.