Insecurity: Fulani residents protest eviction notice in Delta

The executive chairman of the council, Mr. Louis Ndukwe, had issued the order, urging those residing in the bushes to vacate within seven days or have their structures demolished.

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 have their hideouts in the bushes.

But hundreds of nomadic Fulani residents who bore placards of various inscriptions in a protest along the Benin-Asaba-Onitsha expressway, said they are not criminals but law abiding Nigerians who have lived in Delta State from birth.

Spokesman for the protesters, Mr. Idris Abubakar said the quit notice 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. We are lawful tenants and we have been paying rent. We documents to prove that.

“We have become citizens of Delta State because we have lived here all our lives. If you ask us to go now, we don’t even know where to go.”

On the precarious security situation, Abubakar insisted that Fulani residents in the locality were not culpable, saying that the criminal acts could have been committed by natives, and urged the authorities to look inwards to find solutions to the teething problems.

Reacting swiftly to the protest, chairman of the local government area, Mr. Louis Ndukwe 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.

“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.

He said at the initial stage when the Fulani residents opted to live in the bushes, there were no problems, adding however that recently heinous crimes “are being committed in the bushes, people are being killed, they are being kidnapped for ransom, our women are being raped in the bushes.

“So what we are saying is that they should come out and live with our people, let us known who you are so that tomorrow, we can account for ourselves.”

According to him, the seven-day ultimatum has 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.”