Governor of Ondo State, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, has described the protesting farmers in Oluwa Forest reserve as encroachers.
Mr Aiyedatiwa also clarified that the Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture, Ayo Sotinrin, was not using any private firm to seize farmlands.
The governor described such claims by the farmers as “malicious, unfounded, and a clear attempt at character assassination.”
A statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Ebenezer Adeniyan, in Akure, the governor, explained that “the company has been operating under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement since 2021, with its acquisition and development of agro-industrial zones fully approved and supervised by the state government.
Reacting to the protest by the farmers in the government forest reserve, the governor accused them of encroaching on government land beyond the areas allocated to them for agricultural use.
Aiyedatiwa said that it was the farmers who violated the terms of the land agreement, not the private firm.
Recall that farmers in the government forest reserve had staged a protest over alleged forceful takeover of their farms by a private company, SAO Agro-Allied Services Limited.
They alleged that the state government officials collaborated with the firm.
However, in the statement entitled “Setting the Record Straight on Cocoa Farmers’ Protest and Role of Government Officials,” the governor said there there was a misrepresentation of facts regarding the ownership and allocation of the land in question.
The statement said that the “state government remains committed to the welfare of genuine farmers, and to the legal and responsible use of declassified degraded forest reserves for agricultural purposes.
