Kwara communities raise alarm over influx of IDPs

Some communities in the Kwara South senatorial district have raised an alarm over the influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) into their communities.  A socio-cultural organization of indigenes of seven local government areas in the district, the Kwara South Advancement Agenda (KSAA), yesterday called the attention of government to the development while speaking to journalists […]

Some communities in the Kwara South senatorial district have raised an alarm over the influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) into their communities. 

A socio-cultural organization of indigenes of seven local government areas in the district, the Kwara South Advancement Agenda (KSAA), yesterday called the attention of government to the development while speaking to journalists in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

The chairman of the group, Mr Opeyemi Olabanji, said that displaced persons always trooped to their communities each time there was a crisis in the adjoining states of Ekiti, Benue, Osun and others. 

The organization, which proposed the conversion of some of the existing national parks and game reserves to livestock parks, said that about three per cent of the entire Nigerian land mass was being utilized as either national parks or reserves, a luxury he felt Nigeria could no longer afford to retain in the face of the current threats to peace and tranquility, warning there was the need to take proactive measures to avert crisis.

“The situation is such that if people who had fought in a place suddenly meet themselves in another place, the tendency to re-new their hostilities is very high. This is what we don’t want to happen, which is making us to look inward and proffer the needed solution to it,” he said. 

Olabanji said the KSAA had designed a framework that could serve as a permanent solution to the frequent clashes between the farmers and the herdsmen.  According to him, since many states were refusing the Federal Government’s proposition of establishment of cattle colonies, it should convert, at least, one or two of the nation’s national parks into livestock parks. 

Already, he said, a proposal to that effect had been packaged for submission to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. 

According to him, “Even if all the 36 states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory, decide to donate 10,000 hectares each, we will have 370,000 hectares, whereas the Kanji Lake National Park alone covers 534,082 hectares. This is well above the 370,000 hectares being sought for by the Federal Government.