War would have erupted if herdsmen had killed me – Falae said

Chief Olu Falae

A former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief Olu Falae, has declared that if he had been killed by the Fulani herdsmen who allegedly kidnapped him, there would have been an outbreak of ethnic war between the Fulani and the Yoruba people.

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The elder statesman, who was kidnapped on his farm in Ilado village, Akure North Local Government Area of Ondo State, on September 21 and freed on September 24, 2015, noted that he survived the abduction through the grace of God as the abductors attempted to take his life during the captivity .

He stated this while narrating his ordeal in the kidnappers’ den to the immediate former Minster for Education, Mallam Abubakar Shekarau, who paid him a visit to sympathise with him over the incident.

“God has a way of doing His things. I know God just decided to spare my life. God really saved my life. They tortured me, stripped me naked and did a lot of things to me in their den. They attempted to kill me, but they did not succeed.

“I also thank God for making me to survive the ordeal, because if they had killed me there, many lives would have been lost too. It would have become an ethnic war between the Yoruba and the Fulani. So, I thank God that the matter did not get to that level.”

Expressing his sympathy to the former Minister of Finance, Mallam Shekarau said the only solution to the security challenges in the country was for the people of the country to embrace community policing, whereby everyone would be a policeman in the community.

The former governor of Kano State said there was a need for government at all levels in the country to encourage community policing, noting that the regular policemen could not do it alone.

“The issue of security should be the concern of everybody; not only the policemen alone. Our governments should do everything possible to encourage community policing. Everybody should be a policeman; everybody should be his brother’s keeper. We should learn how to immediately report any act criminality to the security.

“It is very unfortunate that this kind of thing happened to an elderly man like Chief Falae, who has served this country meritoriously,” the former Presidential candidate stressed.

source The Punch