Herders have killed one person and injured fourteen others in a renewed crisis between farmers and graziers in Yelwa Abbare community of Ardo Kola Local Government Area, Taraba State.
This reporter can confirmed the crisis started when a herder took his cattle into a rice farms of the people in the community, and was asked to take them out, he refused.
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 rout through the farms but the herder insisted and pushed his cattlles into some portion of the rice farms that have not been harvested, they asked him to go back but he refused.
“as a result a crisis ensued between the herders and the 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 falled down, and on seeing that, a farmer reacted, hit and brought that herder down and also hit another one after which the herders left with the cattlles shouting to take revenge.” Yusuf stated
Another victim, Muhammad Ibrahim who said he came to Taraba 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 to comatose with sticks while cutting others with cutlasses.
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.
Both victims Malam Haruna Yusuf and Muhammad Ibrahim decried the rampant cases 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 situation.
