• State govt plans enumeration of herders to tackle insecurity
• Begins clampdown on education sector, shuts 600 sub-standard schools
Heads of Fulani-Bororo herders and farmers in Osun State, otherwise known as ‘Serikis’, yesterday, pledged readiness to continue to live peacefully with the respective host communities in the state.
They also renewed co-operation and support with the state government in its efforts to flush out bad eggs among them.
This assurance was made at a meeting convened by the leadership of the state committee on peaceful co-existence between Fulani/Bororo farmers and crop farmers held with the heads of Fulani and Bororo at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Government Secretariat, Abere, Osogbo.
Chairman of the committee, Mudasiru Toogun, who spoke while addressing journalists shortly after the meeting, said the state government had decided to begin massive enumeration and headcount of migrants and immigrants in the state.
He disclosed that the government would ensure data capturing to enhance proper profiling of the herders residing in the state as part of efforts to strengthen cordial relationship and peaceful co-existence between the Fulani/Bororo herders and Yoruba crop farmers.
Toogun added that the decision was necessary as part of efforts to update the statistics and data of immigrants living in the state, stressing that the initiative would help to determine the population of the immigrants to prevent any form of security threat that may arise from unchecked influx of migrants.
He noted that the initiative would further help to give the government an insight into necessary infrastructural facilities to be done to support the Fulani and Bororo immigrants living in the state.
Toogun said the state had worked out a modality to begin the issuance of identity cards to Fulani and Bororo living in the state as a means of identification, confirmation and authentication, saying the initiative would further help to stem the tide of incessant security challenges in the state.
In his remarks, the Seriki Fulani in the state, Alhaji Ibrahim Babatunde, assured government of total compliance with relevant rules capable of sustaining the bond of unity existing between them and Yoruba crop farmers.
He sought for further support from the government, noting that his people would continue to live and relate peacefully with the people of their host communities.
In another development, Osun State government, yesterday, lamented the spate of quackery and operation of sub-standard schools in the education sector of the state.
This came as it closed down about 600 private schools for operating illegally.
The state’s Commissioner for Education, Folorunsho Bamisayemi, disclosed this at an inter-ministerial press briefing organised by the Ministry of Information and Civic Orientation in Osogbo.
Bamisayemi said the clampdown on sub-standard schools was part of government’s effort to ensure sanity and sanctity in the education sector of the state.
