To protect them from the claimed attacks by certain suspected hoodlums, the state has called on Asabi Abiodun, the state commissioner of police.
The state High Court in Ore, according to the farmers, stopped the state government and other defendants from doing anything on the land, which sparked the attacks on them.
The farmers clarified that a court injunction that had been served to the company in May of this year prevented them from doing anything on the land, in opposition to an agro-allied company’s claims that the state government had leased the cocoa farmlands to them.
The farmers said on Wednesday in the state capital of Akure that they had been attacked by thugs in the area ever since the court issued the judgment in May.
Mr. Abayomi Isinleye, the community’s cocoa framers’ chairman, claimed that the suspected thugs were attacking them in an attempt to drive them off the property.
He said that their attorney, Mr. Tope Temokun, has delivered a protest letter to the state’s CP’s office.
“Our camp was attacked to dislodge us by gunmen we believed to be sponsored,” Isinleye stated. “During our encounter with the attackers, who fired at us, we pursued them and recovered two guns and some motorcycles.”
Along with some caps and bullets, we also found them and took them to the police area command in Ore to file a formal report.
We had previously filed a lawsuit in court against the invasion, grading, and forced eviction of our members from the reserve due to the cocoa farm lands.
“The Ondo State High Court at Ore, presided over by Justice Aderemi Adegoroye, granted an interim injunction restraining the Ondo State Government and others from further grading or continuing to grade our cocoa plantations and farmlands upon the application moved by our lawyer, Mr. Tope Temokun.”
He added that the farmers’ primary means of subsistence was the farmlands, characterizing the move as a call to anarchy.
He added that the farmers’ primary means of subsistence was the farmlands, characterizing the move as a call to anarchy.
Mr. Odugemi Omolewa, the group secretary, made a plea to the state government to save them from losing their source of income.
He bemoaned, “Since the crisis began, many of the farmers’ relatives had passed away and many of the children had dropped out of school because they couldn’t work on the farmlands.”
