Some cocoa farmers at the Oluwa Forest Reserve in Odigbo Local Government Area of Ondo State have called on the state Commissioner of Police, Asabi Abiodun, to save them from the alleged attacks by some suspected hoodlums today.
The farmers said the attacks against them began after the state High Court sitting in Ore had restrained the state government and other defendants from doing anything on the land.
According to them, an agro-allied company had been claiming that the cocoa farmlands had been leased to it by the state government but the farmers explained that there was a court injunction that had been served to the company in May this year, restraining them from doing anything on the land.
The farmers, yesterday in Akure, the state capital, stated that since May when the court had given the order, they had been experiencing attacks by hoodlums in the area
The chairman of the cocoa framers in the community, Mr Abayomi Isinleye, said the suspected hoodlums were attacking them to eject them from the farmland.
According to him, a protest letter had been submitted to the office of the state’s CP through their lawyer, Mr. Tope Temokun.
Isinleye said, “Our camp was attacked to dislodge us by gunmen believed to be sponsored and in the course of the encounter with them, we pursued the attackers, who shot at us and we recovered two guns and some motorcycles.
Punch / Arafat Ayofe
