Ruga settlement being adopted by the Federal Government as a solution to the farmers-herders clash in the country is bound to set the country on fire if not handled with care.
This is the position of Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka.
Soyinka who spoke during the launch of United Nations’ Solutions 17 SDG programme on Tuesday, said the problem was not being properly handled.
His words: “Ruga is going to be an explosion if not handled with care. But why do we not take our policies from good models? This is not the way people and countries deal with issues of cattle.
“I travel everywhere. It has to be handled in a way that is logical, comprehensible to the environment. When a cattle walks up to the window of my house in Abeokuta, a house which is located in a residential area, then there’s a problem.
“When cattle go to Ijebu Ode and eat up their plant seedlings and so on and you expect people to be quiet?”
Soyinka who berated President Muhammadu Buhari for the way he had handled the farmers-herdsmen clash in the country, said so many lives had been lost unjustifiably.
He said if the way Buhari had handled the situation before the election was anything to go by, he should have lost the in the contest for his re-election.
Said he: “President Buhari deserved to have lost the last election for the lackadaisical attitude he took to the issue of cattle rearing in the country.
“People have been killed in hundreds just because of the failure of leadership at a critical time. And the cattle herders have been given a sense of impunity. They kill without any compunction, they drive away the farmers who have been contributing to the food solutions in the country, the cattle eat their crops and then you come up with Ruga.”
He restated that there would be trouble in the country if the Ruga settlement solution was not handled imaginatively and with humanity as a priority.
“Any country where cattle takes priority over human life is definitely at an elementary stage,” he argued.
