Many Large Scale Farms Abandoned Out Of Fear Of Herdsmen Invasion, As Food Scarcity Looms
The Oasis Reporters
February 8, 2021
Reports abound of wealthy foreign based Nigerians who returned with high hopes and technology education, armed with requisite equipment to tap into the lush green vegetation found in states like Ogun, Osun, Edo, Ondo and Oyo etc. Their sole aim has been that of changing the face of agriculture via profitable mechanization. They employ hundreds of youths in the countryside with many unemployed youths in the city migrating to the countryside as well to find work.
One glaring example is Dr. Fatai Alawode who had employed over 200 youths working on his farm and the number of employees was expected to rise to over 500 in two years.
He was killed right on his farm because he complained of cows invading his farm and eating up his crops.
There has equally been the case of a young graduate farmer whose fiancé abandoned his good job in Lagos to join her in Oke-Ogun region of Oyo State to engage in large scale farming. Just a rifle shot from a Fulani herdsman terrorist kidnapper with his gang, snuffed out man’s life. The shot was meant to bring his car to a screeching halt, so they could demand for ransom or kill his girlfriend.
The ransom?
They got it. Not only did the lady and her family lose money in millions, she also had the trauma of losing her husband to be. The emotional trauma can best be imagined.
The world was held spellbound as they watched the documentary on her that is still trending on the internet.
But who are these military precision
Fulani sharp shooters ?
What do they do with the hundreds of millions they’ve collected so far in ransom payments, for you don’t see the output of the money through development in the breed of cattle they roam about with, neither do you notice any infrastructural development in the path they’ve taken from their original Yemeni homeland (a country perennially at war) to their first African stopover in Guinea, Mali, Senegal, The Gambia or Central Africa Republic.
Like the Sultan of Sokoto was quoted to have said that these herdsmen scarcely spend all that loot in the bush.
So what do they do with all that ransom money ?
Buy more sophisticated weapons with it perhaps?
Then what are the implications of having them armed to the teeth, in fact better armed than some national armies?
Can the political implications be imagined, even though their misadventure was believed to have caused them dearly in the CAR?
Destabilizing the country by kidnapping natives and devastating communities in the Oyo interior as recorded in the book written over 150 years ago by a rescued slave saved by a British slavery abolitionist military ship, Bishop Ajayi Crowther says it all about kidnappers and the people involved in it.
Meanwhile, large scale farms and even small ones are being abandoned due to huge losses and the morbid fear of encountering the terrorist herdsmen militia.
This is a problem that has to be solved urgently by willing political leaders. Meanwhile, travelling on Nigerian roads is being undertaken with great trepidation out of fear of Fulani militia road blocks and their flying bullets.
“What sort of mindless wickedness and injustice is this?”,, someone lamented on Twittter:
Who will go into farming now? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/I4OyN1OHKO
— Alawode-James, OlaJumoke (@oluwaloninyo) January 24, 2021
Then went on: “still have PTSD when someone bang my door.. the image of Bandits invading my house & running for dear life haunts me
Closed down a 70ha farm.
See you can be logical & rational when you’re not a victim
Do you know what it cost to abandon your source of livelihood?”
