By Dayo Johnson, Akure

Ondo State government has explained the reason for ordering all illegal occupants to vacate its forest reserve across the state. The Senior Special Assistant to the state governor on Agric and Agribusiness, Akin Olotu, who said this in Akure, denied that it was an act of wickedness.

Olotu clarified this while fielding questions from journalists at a media parley organized by the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ondo State Council.

He said the decision was part of government’s efforts to boost its economy and to rid the reserves of irregularities.

According to him,”this administration is so kind to farmers in all our forest reserves, unlike what we have in the past. It is a punishable offence for anybody to just enter forest reserve, building houses, creating camps, pulling down the trees and others. It is five years imprisonment on conviction.

“When this administration came in, we started the registration of farmers in the forest and the registration was never meant to confirm the ownership on them but for us to be sure of those operating in our forest reserve.

“When we started it, most of them were not faithful, and most of them were not from Ondo state and we now made it compulsory for them that you cannot be mining our resources here and take it elsewhere. Forest is a creation of law, so you need a counter law to declassify the forest. Ondo State Government is not wicked to anybody. No responsible government will just allow the forest reserve to be occupied by people without knowing them. So the security of our forest reserve, boosting of our cocoa production in the state and making it exportable are very paramount to us.”

Olotu, however, warned some so called ‘Camp Heads’ at the forest reserve to stop frustrating the efforts of government in securing the forest reserve. He said the “Camp Heads” just allocate lands to illegal occupants in the forest reserve, collect money from them and pocket it without any authorisation from government.

The Senior Special Assistant, however, called on the Federal Government to give needed assistance to farmers. and traders in Nigeria to avert looming food insecurity in Nigeria.

He lamented that insecurity was threatening the development of the agricultural sector.

According to him while insecurity prevent farmers from going to the farm, the farmers need a sense of security alongside other requirements to enable them put in more work in the farms.

“If farmers are secured today, I can tell you that we will be self-sufficient in food production in the country”, he said