Ekiti State Deputy Governor, Otunba Bisi Egbeyemi has said the Dr Kayode Fayemi administration would continue to make use of wise counsel and advice of elders to ensure peace and development of the state.
Egbeyemi said the role of elders in ensuring peacebuilding and peaceful coexistence among residents of the state cannot be overemphasized hence their relevance in ensuring stability.
The deputy governor who spoke at the January meeting of the Ekiti Council of Elders held in Ado Ekiti, the state capital also appreciated the body’s interest in making the Southwest a peaceful zone in Nigeria.
The elders discussed a report on the issue of land usage by non-indigenes in Ekiti handled by a committee raised by them to look into the matter.
Egbeyemi, who promised to convey the decisions reached by the council to Governor Kayode Fayemi, said the present administration would not sideline the elders on issues of governance and development of the state.
The council resolved that traditional rulers, community leaders and government at all levels to monitor the activities and land usage by non-indigenes across the Southwest.
The monitoring, according to them, became necessary to prevent cases of kidnapping, banditry, herdsmen attacks, land grabbing and loss of lives across the towns and villages in the region.
This was part of the recommendations of an eight-member committee of the council chaired by Chief Abiodun Ajayi and Mr Tunde Omojola as secretary.
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The committee maintained that communities across the states in the Southwest needed to re-establish its long-standing cultural practices in the land management in order to protect the lives and property in their domains.
To achieve these, the committee explained that various towns should adopt the maps of their states so as to be able to monitor the use of land by non-indigenes.
The recommendations also rejoined the state governments to work out modalities that would make land tenure system to be in accordance with the long-standing cultural practices of the indigenous communities with a call to flush out suspected criminals from their hideouts, especially in government forest reserves.
In his remarks, Yoruba leader, Professor Banji Akintoye, who observed that security of lives and property is non-negotiable, craved the support of all and sundry to the realisation of the set aims and objectives.
Akintoye, a Second Republic Senator advocated the need to pursue the Southwest regional security network codenamed ‘Amotekun’ to a logical conclusion in the interest of lives and property of the people resident in the zone.
Appraising the document as a very good work that is worthy of being placed before the United Nations, Akintoye said issues in the document are relevant in solving the problem of migration which has become a global issue.
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