As all nooks and crannies of Nigeria is plagued by kidnapping, banditry, herdsmen crises and other vices, Oba AbdulRasheed Adewale Akanbi, Oluwo of Iwoland, has a word for the authorities. The traditional ruler has called on the security agencies to deploy digital equipment to check insecurity in the country, as some part of the measures to tackle insecurity. In an open letter to the President Bola Tinubu, Oluwo expressed dissatisfaction with the spate of kidnappings and killings perpetrated by killer herdsmen in the South-West region, and other parts of the country. He has, therefore, urged President Tinubu to take some measures towards addressing the insecurity in the country. To start with, the Oluwo believes that the president will win the war against insecurity if he makes efforts to ensure that the Fulani herdsmen are given the opportunity to go to school.
Hear the monarch: Our security should go digital. If not now, who else is our Messiah? Nigerias security should be strengthened. The boost can optionally be assured through mandatory and timely provision of electronic national identity cards for everyone on Nigerian soil such that the security forces can accost and demand identification anywhere, anytime. With a digital ID card, the security can track suspicious members of society.” He believes that the second suggestion will also benefit the young herds, just as it will be beneficial to their patrons. That he said, should see the government Arresting those children from the bush (and taking them) to the four walls of classrooms”, an option he said would also “requires the promotion of ranching.” Education, he said, “is the door to peace,
In view of this, the monarch implores Tinubu, “to assent a legislation that will compel education for children and enact strict punishment for parents refusing to educate their children.” What that means is that the Tinubu-led administration must invest in ranching for the herdsmen to keep their cattle, adding that the nomadic system is injurious to them, as much it is dangerous to the entire nation.
Aside from the development promoting peaceful co-existence, Oluwo said such a step will also provide for the young herds the advantage of education and choices of other careers. He said, Priority can be placed on the Fulanis with preferential monitoring of nomadic settlements. This option will secure their future to be engineers, pilots, doctors, professors, kings, bankers, ambassadors etc and not kidnappers.”
The monarch told the president that he was speaking from experience. According to him, his domain hosts the largest number of Fulani people in Osun State. So, what did he do? He said, “Before the escalation of the kidnapping menace, I visited the Fulanis in my domain mandating formal education and threatened to arrest parents of teen children rearing cattle during school hours. The monarch sure knows what it means to preside over an environment with conflict. Iwo is an agrarian community, so a flare of conflict involving herders and farmers will surely create crisis for food supply, disruption of local commerce and lack of peace. In fact, due to the strategic importance of Iwo in the area of agricultural production and cattle in the state and adjoining states a rupture of peace there will definitely ignite crisis in its neighbourhood. If the insecurity is not curbed, the monarch must have reasoned that it would spread to other places, notwithstanding local strategies by monarch and other community leaders.
He, therefore, appealed to the president to work with the National Assembly and treat the enactment of the law with dispatch, adding that for the stubborn kidnappers, anyone found guilty should be dealt with accordingly. He believes that that will serve as a deterrent to others. The monarch further admonished Nigerians to collaborate with the security agencies in the provision of intelligence reports.
OLUWO SUGGESTS ANTIDOTE TO INSECURITY IN NIGERIA
