Herders Kill One, Injure Fourteen Others In Taraba

By Yusuf Salihu Sansani, Jalingo

Herders have killed one person and injured fourteen others in a renewed crisis between farmers and grazers in Yelwa Abbare community of Ardo Kola Local Government Area, Taraba State.

As usual, the crisis started after a herder took his cattles into rice farms of the people of the community and was asked to bring them out but he refused which led to huge damage by the cattlles.

Narrating his ordeals, one of the victims of the crisis, Haruna Yusuf said they were harvesting rice when a herder came to pass through their farms with his cattles but they prevented him from doing so because there was no cattle route through the farms but the herder insisted and pushed his cattlles into some portion of the rice farms that have not been harvested, saying they asked him to go back but he refused.

Haruna Yusuf stated as a result, a crisis ensued between the herders and farmers beating and bashing one another and in the process, a herder cut off a finger of a youth farmer and hit another one on the head who fell down and on seing that a farmer reacted, hit and brought that herder down and also hit another one after which the herders left with the cattlles voving to take revenge.

Another victim, Muhammad Ibrahim who said he came to Taraban State from Daye village in Potiskum Local Govermment, Yobe State said they were working as labourers in the rice farms in Yelwa Abbare to look for what to eat with their families when the herders regrouped at midnight on Thursday night and attacked over forty farm settlements housing over two hundred labourers beating them with sticks and cutting them with cutlasses.

ALSO READ: Oborevwori Congratulates Okpe Monarch On Installation As Chancellor, Army ‘Varsity

The victim said majority of them took to their heels in different directions into the bush and the lucky ones went to Yelwa Abbare village while the wounded were left unattended to.

He said they went back to the farms and carried their wounded colleagues including the deceased, Malam Hassan Jos who was severely cut on his forehead and died shortly on arrival in the village and was taken and buried at the Jeka-da-Fari graveyard, Jalingo.

Both victims, Malam Haruna Yusuf and Muhammad Ibrahim decried the rampant caces of banditry particularly in Yelwa Abbare community and appealed to all the authorities concerned and the Taraba State Government to take proactive measures to curtail the urgly situation and to sympathise with the masses who left their places of origin to seek for their daily bread in Taraba State.