Governor of Ondo State, Fortunate Aiyedatiwa, has described the protesting farmers in Oluwa Forest reserve as encroachers.
Mr Aiyedatiwa additionally clarified that the Managing Director of the Financial institution of Agriculture, Ayo Sotinrin, was not utilizing any non-public agency to grab farmlands.
The governor described such claims by the farmers as “malicious, unfounded, and a transparent try at character assassination.”
A press release issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Ebenezer Adeniyan, in Akure, the governor, defined that “the corporate has been working underneath a Public-Non-public Partnership (PPP) association since 2021, with its acquisition and growth of agro-industrial zones absolutely authorized and supervised by the state authorities.
Reacting to the protest by the farmers within the authorities forest reserve, the governor accused them of encroaching on authorities land past the areas allotted to them for agricultural use.
Aiyedatiwa mentioned that it was the farmers who violated the phrases of the land settlement, not the non-public agency.
Recall that farmers within the authorities forest reserve had staged a protest over alleged forceful takeover of their farms by a personal firm, SAO Agro-Allied Providers Restricted.
They alleged that the state authorities officers collaborated with the agency.
Nonetheless, within the assertion entitled “Setting the Document Straight on Cocoa Farmers’ Protest and Position of Authorities Officers,” the governor mentioned there there was a misrepresentation of details concerning the possession and allocation of the land in query.
The assertion mentioned that the “state authorities stays dedicated to the welfare of real farmers, and to the authorized and accountable use of declassified degraded forest reserves for agricultural functions.
