Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, has accused his Kaduna State counterpart, Nasir el-Rufai, of trying to export banditry to the southern parts of Nigeria.
He said this in reaction to El-Rufai’s statement that the anti-open grazing law that the southern governors are enacting cannot be implemented.
El-Rufai had, on Tuesday, declared that the law would be ineffective if provision was not first made for where the cattle gerders would keep their cows.
Reacting, Akeredolu said El-Rufai’s stand was suspicious.
According to him, Ondo is resolute in its plan to enforce the law, adding that no one would be able to stop it.
In the statement titled, ‘Anti-open grazing: El-Rufai’s attack on southern governors devious, a hysteric ploy to externalise banditry’, Akeredolu said, “It shall be zealously guarded and conscionably deployed to protect all residents of Ondo State, notwithstanding their ethnic and religious biases.
“From all indications, Governor Nasir El-Rufai, if he was properly quoted and his views not misrepresented, is struggling hard to export banditry to the South under an expressed opinion that is laced with mischief.
“Perhaps, it is apt to state clearly that the likes of Governor El-Rufai are already in a hysteric ‘mode’ of escalating and indeed, externalising banditry, especially as the military onslaught against criminal elements and other terror variants suffices in the North.
“For emphasis, any such comment like that of the Kaduna Governor, if indeed he made that statement, merely seeks to encourage anarchy under the guise of resentment of a law by affected stakeholders.”
