Communities in Emure Ekiti have protested the incursion of about 10 armed herdsmen into their community and their subsequent arrest.
More so, community members have disagreed with the state’s Commissioner of Police’s statement that the interlopers are herders.
Emure Ekiti, headquarters of Emure Local Government Area in Ekiti State, wmwas said to have been thrown into pandemonium as it was reported that a posse of herdsmen stormed the town, allegedly armed with guns.
Inhabitants of the town reportedly raised an alarm and the group of armed men were subsequently arrested and transferred to the State Police Command headquarters in Ado-Ekiti for investigations.
However, less than a week later, the Ekiti State Commissioner of Police, Amba Asuquo, gave an official statement on the case. “They claimed to be hunters and had been charged to court. The issue of invasion was not to my knowledge,” said Asuquo. Asked on what ground were the herdsmen charged to court, he said: “They were appropriately arraigned before the court on the basis of weapons that I think were not lawful.”
Following the police statement, the people of Emure-Ekiti, responded vehemently in a no-holds-barred manner.
According to them, the suspects had come to their town with sinister agenda. One of the respondents, Mrs Bola Idowu, avowed that the strange men were anything but hunters. “They don’t look like hunters at all,” she opined. “Hunters, all the way from the North, in that number and all of them with guns? That is unbelievable.”
Another respondent, Mr Ola Kassim, opined that their outlooks didn’t suggest they were hunters. “They didn’t look like hunters and the guns they all carried were not suggestive of that at all,” he asserted. “They came for a mission which God had helped us to uncover. We want proper investigations conducted on them.”
Another respondent, Mr Kayode Osho, applauded the efforts of the town on how they quickly rallied to enforce the arrest of the interlopers. “It was God who delivered us from them. The way they stormed the town was shocking.
