Hundreds of cattle flee Agogo as police-military team intensify operations

Hundreds of herdsmen and their cattle are voluntarily leaving Agogo area of the Ashanti Region as the police and military reinforcement begins work.
Deployment of helicopters to facilitate land and aerial surveillance by the Operation Cowleg force means there is no hiding place for the nomads and herds.
At least, 143 police personnel and officers deployed from Accra and Kumasi are collaborating with their military counterparts to flush them out of Agogo.
The Agogo area, until now, was home to hundreds of unwelcome herdsmen whose cattle graze on fields of barren and cultivated land.
After years of confrontation with natives with the attendant loss of lives and property, truckloads of cattle have begun leaving the area.
One of them is Omar Farouk.
For fear of being arrested by the police-military team, he has arranged for an articulated truck to transport over 500 cattle to an undisclosed location.
He says he has been living in fear over the presence of the Operation Cowleg team.
The police-military team is happy about the development.
Chief Superintendent Prince Jude Cobbinah is in charge of Operation Cowleg.
“All the locations, through information we visited, we realise that with the information of coming to force of the taskforce, they have started migrating to the Afram Plains.
We are still on the lookout because we have intel [intelligence] group on the ground to still look out for the few who are within the community of which we suspect might still be a threat  to the communities.”
Chief Supt. Cobbinah says the team is resolved to live up to its core mandate of flushing out cattle from Agogo.
“We don’t believe whether it is local who owns the cattle or foreigner. The most important thing is that farm crops are being destroyed so we must be able to ensure that that thing ceases. So we push every cattle out of the system so that the existing problem can be solved.”
Meanwhile, the Inspector General of Police, David Asante Appeatu, and Chief of Defence Staff, Major -General Obed Akwa, are due in Agogo on Tuesday.