AFFA youths seek end to Fulani herdsmen's attacks

An Igbo group, Affa Youths Progressive As­sociation (AYPA) Sun­day held a workshop where it brainstormed on how to stand togeth­er to move their com­munity forward as well as find amicable ways to tackle the reoccur­ring Fulani herdsmen’s attacks in Enugu State.

Addressing a forum of Affa youths from Enugu State resident in the Federal Capital Ter­ritory (FCT) at a work­shop, Rev Fr Joe Ezechi urged them to draw strength from their unity and support one another to form a ma­jor bloc in the state in order to be recognised economically and po­litically.

He identified poverty as a major challenge confronting Affa peo­ple.

“The major thing is poverty and is worsened by the fact that people are not conscious about some of the things they do for themselves or the community. So the challenge we have is the ability to get everybody to be willing to help his brother and to do anything that can bring progress to the town. “We have a large num­ber, nearly the largest single town in Enugu State but we can’t even get good votes or sup­port people that will lead and because of this, we tend to lose what we should gain. You know poverty can make peo­ple run to their tent, we have the challenge of getting our people to­gether because together we can stand better,” he noted.

On the Fulani herds­men attacks during which many were killed and injured, he can­vassed non-violence approach to tackle the scourge.

“Fulani herdsmen are a big threat to our peo­ple because we live in the outskirts of Enugu, so we are part of where they find grazing. For a long time, they have been in our place but now they are becom­ing very violent and a big threat to us. In the 80s, they were not vio­lent but now, they en­ter people’s farms and destroy the sources of their livelihood, rape girls, threaten men and kill when they find you alone in the forest. So it is a very big chal­lenge and I think that one of the solutions is that the people must realise that this threat exists and be able to come together to dis­cuss how to handle it but I am sure that they can’t handle it by vio­lence but by thinking and developing means of handling it,” Rev Fr Ezechi stressed.

He commended AYPA for the initiative and enjoined them to identify programmes to continue to harness their togetherness.