Leaders from the North West, South West and Littoral regions of Cameroon have received training on the rule of law and mutual coexistence as foreigners in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon.
The training was organised by the Coalition of the Willing (COW) and Lawyers All Africa for Africans in partnership with the Nigerian Consulate in the North West and South West regions in Buea.
Addressing the participants and trainers at the Buea Mountain Hotel, the Nigerian Consul General for the North West and South West regions, H.E. Ambassador Baapah Lawal, expressed his gratitude to the facilitators for taking the initiative to empower Nigerians living in Cameroon on their rights.
The workshop, Lawal said, is a demonstration of the importance the Consulate General of Nigeria in Buea attaches to educating Nigerian communities in Cameroon.
“When they know their rights, they will not run afoul of the law, so as much as it is our responsibility to promote harmonious living between Cameroonians and Nigerians. This seminar fulfils that objective,” he said.
On his part, the President of COW, Barrister John Kameni, said the workshop was an opportunity to demonstrate the importance of protecting foreigners and living together.
“The protection of foreign nationals is primordial, especially in the North West and South West. Nigerians in Cameroon must know their rights and must be protected by the laws of this country, and they must be part of peace-building,” Kameni.
Dr Barrister Chana Anthony groomed participants on issues of rule of law and the role of the lawyer in facilitating and protecting rights of foreigners while Justice Mbuagbaw enlightened participants on the role of the prosecutor in the protection of foreigners.
On his part, Dr Mikano from the University of Buea lectured on the rule of law and the protection of the rights of aliens while Dr Barrister Enow Benjamin briefed participants on the rule of law and living together.
Speaking to journalists after the training, Kameni expressed his satisfaction that the participants could better appreciate their rights.
“We are happy that going home today they know their rights and will ensure that whenever they are harassed, they should contact the Consulate, a lawyer or the legal department because we owe it to maintain the friendly relationship we have between our two countries,” he said.
On his part, the Consul General expressed his joy with the caliber of trainers, saying he was satisfied that the participants were fully edified on their rights in this light he challenged them to regularise their legal status in the country and to remain law abiding.
“They should ensure they have their resident permits or cards as the process has been clarified to them. They know what they need to do to regularise their situation in Cameroon to be good ambassadors of Nigeria here,” he said.
One of the participants, eminent philanthropist, HRH Eze Thomas J. Onyengubo, Eze Gburugburu 1 of Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo in Cameroon, expressed that he found the lessons to be interesting and informative. He promised to share the knowledge he gained with his community members who were unable to attend the workshop.
As the second week of Lent opened last week, the mostly Catholic folks of Odiguetue community could not have envisaged murder and mayhem while in a solemn pursuit of the state of grace riding the steed of faith.
But how mistaken they were; the ecumenical sobriety invoked by days of dedicated fasting would be shattered by the weekend. It was the turn of Odiguetue, my ancestral home in Ovia North East in Edo State, to be visited with murder and terror by genocidal Fulani herders.
Throughout the weekend, my phone rang almost continuously as I was inundated with calls from relations and other folks in extreme anger and grief.
Like most Edo communities customarily hospitable to all ethnic nationalities, Odiguetue had for ages been home to a considerable population of Igbira farmers. Things however took a sour turn last month when, in an unprovoked attack, these Igbira folks were reportedly sacked from their farms by AK-47-wielding herders and their yam tubers fed to the cows.
On Friday, a farm labourer (said to be Benue indigene) was shot at while on his way from the farm.
On Saturday, two other community members (one William Okpoko and an unnamed Igbo man) barely escaped death while tending their farms as the AK-47-wielding assailants opened fire, just to make way for their herd to graze.
In fright and then in flight, one of the victims expectedly left his weather-beaten motorcycle behind.
For the bullets thus “wasted”, the invaders grew madder. So mindless, they would not just stop at allowing their cattle plunder the farms; that bike was vandalized, even in its condition of decrepitude.
The following day, the reign of terror was, in fact, escalated. The herders literally went berserk, shooting indiscriminately from one farm to the other. Caught unawares, not a few sustained gunshot wounds. This time, another community member (said to be of Igbira stock) was not so lucky as he was felled in cold blood by a bullet.
I confirmed this with multiple credible sources.
These atrocities, I am ashamed to admit, have actually been going on for long, largely under-reported, simply because the victims are poor folks. Forgotten by government, the only asset they own is the land, often inherited. The only skill they possess is farming. Now, the opportunity to even parlay that to eke out a living is being denied them.
Meanwhile, as the news of the bloodshed spread by weekend and the now restive youths – ordinarily doughty descendants of ancient warriors who with bare hands had confronted British invaders in the 19th century – began to regroup in the communal square, a police team from Ekiadolor Division stormed the community and, predictably, counseled against reprisal, urging the people to approach the police headquarters in Benin City instead and formally lodge a complaint.
Now, the curious angle: while profusely urging the wounded and the traumatized to exercise more equanimity, the custodians of legitimate firearms otherwise licensed to kill in the pursuit of crime or the defense of justice failed to say the words that would have made more meaning to the disaffected in the circumstance: a resolve to lead the youths and other volunteers into the bush right away to, at least, disarm – if not dislodge – the murderous herders who, besides heaping such gratuitous social insult on the community, have now virtually turned the farmlands to a no-go-area for the locals, thus undermining the people’s economic survival.
Human endurance or patience is certainly tested when the victims are made to bear the additional burden of having to exercise restraint in the face of extreme provocation.
Sadly, Odiguetue is not isolated. These tales of woe are replicated virtually across the length and breath of Edo State today.
Across the land, the body count is mounting. In recent times, no fewer than sixty people have been reportedly killed in such gruesome circumstances. In Ojah community in Edo North, for instance, Jerome Obayemi lost an arm while fending off a herder’s machete blow meant to behead him on the way to the farm.
Elsewhere in Ewu community in Edo Central, two elderly women, Christiana Ikheloa and Fatima Emoyon, were butchered by suspected herdsmen. In neighboring Ekpoma town, Margaret Odiamehi, a grandmother, was allegedly raped and killed while working on her farm.
At a personal level, this writer has had cause in the past to lament his own ordeal on this space. Once, we woke up one morning to find that the forecourt of my private residence in Benin City had been vandalized by cattle stomping past. Such is the sort of monstrosity we are being conditioned to accept as the new normal – cows willfully violating the sanctity of human dwelling.
Responding to the growing siege, the Godwin Obaseki administration, apart from hosting a stakeholders summit, recently rolled out a slew of counter-measures, the highlight of which is the ban on overnight grazing. But as the Odiguetue killings in broad daylight last weekend have undoubtedly proved, such policy would no longer seem adequate.
Already, the revered Benin monarch, Oba Ewuare II, has expressed worry over this clear and present threat. From reports, he has taken proactive steps by rousing the traditional sentinels to be on guard.
What remains is to infuse the political space with equal sense of urgency. The peace and security of the society, let it be stressed, is a shared commitment. Much as political values may differ, the challenge of the moment calls for a bi-partisan response by the political elite of both APC and PDP in Edo.
A bill sent by PDP to the State of Assembly recently seeking a more stringent rule of engagement for the herders ought not be dismissed in entirety ab initio on account of its provenance as I read some easily excitable APC stalwarts have been doing.
It will be imprudent of Edo Government to keep lobotomizing itself with a cocktail of “soft” regulations in the hour of great peril when vigilant neighbours are adopting tough stance. That will only render the acclaimed “cradle of black civilization” the new preferred destination of these savages. Whose interest is thus served?
Really, only those who have had to endure the torture and trauma inflicted by the herders over the time are perhaps better placed to attest that the devil rarely ascertains APC or PDP birthmark before wreaking havoc.
When not sacking farmlands, it is now common knowledge that some of these killer herders convert their “down time” into either kidnap-for-ransom or bloody armed robberies along either the Benin-Okada expressway or the Benin-Agbanikaka axis or the Benin-Auchi corridor.
So, if anyone ought to be incensed at this development and therefore impatient to cut the leash, it should be Obaseki, known to be champion of free enterprise. And for three critical reasons. With Edo’s still weak industrial base, there is no denying that farming remains the largest employer of our people.
Two, mechanized agriculture is at the heart of the 200,000 jobs Obaseki promised to create in four years. With people now afraid to go to farm on account of AK-47-wielding herders lurking in the wild, we should know that existing agrarian jobs are being lost instead, with grave threat to food security as well.
Three, Obaseki’s commendable offer to engage repatriates from Libya is empowering them to seize opportunities in the agriculture sector.
Now, it will be doubly tragic if, after being enslaved and dehumanized in the accursed North African hell-hole, the unfortunate youths who choose to enroll at the new farming camps end up being used as target practice by these lunatics masquerading as cattle-rearers.
SIR: A few weeks ago, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, technically made the head of cow sellers in Ekiti State to take responsibility for any mishap that might be caused in Ekiti State by Fulani herdsmen.
It appears we are all getting it wrong. We are all focusing only on the havocs of Fulani herdsmen but, not on cow owners who actually armed these herdsmen. We need to identify others so that the rest of us may go on our knees to beg them so that their hired herdsmen might stop their destructive tendencies.
Let’s face it, if the rest of us were bent on not allowing the promoters of Biafra to divide the country, we would not also allow the sponsors of herdsmen to expand their territorial ambitions into our backyards. The era of expansion of the territory by force of arms is gone and gone for ever in Nigeria.
A professor of Fulani origin once told us that the Fulani do not eat cows. He said that the Fulani were born to rule. Now we know their agenda.
The APC has mandated Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to advise the party. I hope he would be forthright to tell the party that it is losing ground to its opponents with the non-stop of the killings by the herdsmen all over the country.
He should be bold enough to tell the party home and bitter truth.
APC has done a lot to change and reposition this country but, the unrelenting killings by Fulani herdsmen are proving to be a waterloo for the party.
Nobody will remember the good works APC is doing so long those arming the Fulani herdsmen remain unidentified in the Nigerian environment.
A few weeks ago, I went to Kara on Lagos/Ibadan express road, my research was alarming but educative. The first things I learnt was that even though most of the cows came form the North, many of them also belong to the southern elites mostly politicians and top civil and retired and serving officers. These are the “untouchable Nigerians” who hold the reign of power in the country. That was why the Inspector General of Police was very much handicapped.
I would like cow owners to realize that they are in the business of cow rearing like other businessmen and women in Nigeria. They cannot harry the rest of us to submission. The cow owners are committing sins against God and humanity and it is definitely going to have boomerang effects later in their life.
OVER 50 people were rushed to various hospitals in South Africa after eating meat from a cow that had reportedly died from a snake bite.
The incident happened at Mpoza village outside Tsolo in the Eastern Cape Province.
The province’s department of health spokesperson, Sizwe Kupelo said the patients confirmed they had eaten the meat from the carcass of an animal that had died after being bitten by a snake.
He said the patients experienced diarrhoea, vomiting, headaches and stomach cramps, according to a report by News24.com.
Among those who were ill were 16 children, eight of whom had been transferred to the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital’s paediatric ward, while the others were treated at Mthatha Regional Hospital.
Kupelo said four elderly patients were also transferred to Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital for further treatment.
Kupelo said the department was urging communities to stop consuming meat from dead animals as it was dangerous to do so.
Truth, as one likes to say, is a pest. It is left for those haunted to device their own coping strategies. As for President Muhammadu Buhari, it does appear that when silence is not deployed fiercely as shield against uncomfortable questions, a few other tactics are improvised with a view to purchasing time or rehabilitating the truth.
The Osinbajo peace panel convoked last week in the wake of the bloodletting by herdsmen would seem the continuation of a familiar theatre of looking for what is not missing. The victims are left to grieve alone. The crime scene is known. The culprits have owned up.
Regardless, the motion would still go on.
But even before the Osinbajo panel’s inaugural sitting, the air would seem fouled up with bad faith already. Miyetti, a key party in the conflict, has pooh-poohed the idea, objecting to the inclusion of governors of Benue and Taraba for “promulgating military decrees” against Fulani in their states.
While accusing the two governors whose states have undoubtedly borne the heaviest casualties in the latest round of carnage, Miyetti yet did not appear to see anything prejudicial in the comment by the Kano governor, another member of the peace panel. Barely concealing sympathy – if not solidarity – with the herders, Governor Ganduje had argued at another forum: “You’ll find a herdsman from a West African country moving about with a herd of cattle of 1,000 which narrow cattle routes cannot contain. Hence he needs to trespass farms in search of fodder, which often led to very dangerous disputes.”
Nor could the rest of the nation find comfort in the memory of an earlier statement in 2016 on NTA by no less a figure than PMB himself which tended to provide blanket rationalization for the herder’s trespass. Apparently drawing from experience as a notable cattle farmer himself, Buhari reportedly said that it is humanly impossible for a man herding 400 cows not to breach someone’s farmland.
At the risk of sounding like a broken vinyl, this writer wishes to restate his conviction that ranching remains the best option for the nation given the grave circumstances we have found ourselves and if we are truly desirous of preserving what is left of public confidence.
Given what the airwaves and cyber space are filled with these days, one wonders the kind of security reports PMB is daily furnished with. Unless his security adviser has been selling him dummies, PMB should by now have become aware of the ratcheting up of rhetoric in the Christian community lately.
The reason is not far-fetched. Christians appear more worsted in the unending bloodshed.
Indeed, at no time in Nigeria’s history has a broad spectrum of Christian leaders been so frontal, so vociferous in denouncing political leadership and invoking thunderous imprecations against those perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be aiding and abetting the persecution of the church.
From the Onaiyekans, the Oyedepos, the Bakares, the Mbakas to the Suleimans and several others, there is a lengthening list of aggrieved Christian leaders.
Waving a PVC, one of them, the leader of Dunamis, Paul Enenche, in fact, pointedly urged congregants to go register and be prepared to vote out “evil leadership”.
If the influential Redeemed’s Enoch Adeboye is yet to openly join the growing tumult from church, it is perhaps only because Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is not just a top member but also his anointed.
So, a responsible and responsive leadership should be seen to be tackling the issue head on by adopting the option that is sustainable and consistent with global best practice, not acting in a manner that suggests it is not averse to mortgaging or subordinating the dignity of the majority to the commercial interest or convenience of a few.
Had the government found the political courage to adopt ranching, what the Osinbajo panel should be doing now is simply enforcement.
When Agric minister Audu Ogbeh now proudly declares that 16 states already signed up for his much touted “cow colony”, one only wonders if he still has the presence of mind to discern the grotesque picture the graph illustrates.
Of course, all Southern states and the associated socio-cultural organizations have formally foresworn the idea of yielding even an inch in their domains as cow colony. Ogbeh’s 16 states are in the north with the exception of Benue and Taraba. So, what is unwittingly revealed is a nation again dangerously polarized along ethno-religious lines.
By adamantly pressing ahead with the quixotic idea of “cow colony”, Abuja could only be said to either be living in denial or coldly indifferent to fears genuinely harbored in many sections of the country about the future of such “cow colony”.
Such anxieties are nourished by bitter memories. The legend of Othman Dan Fodio is thought to have followed a similar trajectory.
Over two centuries ago, the Fulani pathfinder, we are reminded, had depended on the generosity of host King Yunfa, the Hausa Sarki in Gobir, for a piece of land to settle as camp. Few years later, the settler toppled the king. Thus, began the Sokoto Caliphate and the Fulani suzerainty and the subjugation of what used to be Hausa civilization.
That history was duplicated elsewhere in Ilorin where migrant Alimi double-crossed his host, Afonja. Thus, what ancestrally used to be a Yoruba outpost was added to the Fulani empire.
More contemporaneously, the same undercurrents are at the root of the ethno-religious eruptions we continue to witness in Plateau.
In the 80s, the Babangida administration yielded to powerful lobby by creating Jos North for the minority Fulani lamenting marginalization. Many years later, the Fulani became emboldened enough to insist their own cultural head be treated as a five-star paramount ruler in the state – a proposition the indigenes considered a taboo.
The same way the indigenes of Southern Kaduna woke up one day to find that the migrant Fulani they gave land to sell cattle had taken over and crowned their own head as First-class emir of Jamaa with the entire Southern Kaduna now obliged to pay tribute to the Zazzau emirate.
With such tales of treachery and perfidy now refreshed in public mind and then massively telegraphed with the power of social media, it should have become clear to Ogbeh why, outside the North-West and North-East, most other people only tend to view the notion of “cow colony” as a hidden agenda to spread deep South in foreseeable future what Othman Dan Fodio began in Sokoto in 1804.
Abuja may choose to live in denial, but this precisely is why only 16 states will sign up for Ogbeh’s “cow colony”.
Again, despite the bold handwriting on the wall and the continued deft footworks on the field, the president and his publicists are still evasive over his candidature in 2019. Even in the unlikely event that PMB does not eventually run in 2019, those who truly care should be concerned about how his political epitaph would be worded upon exit.
Already, it is perhaps safe to assume that, with the mounting cadavers across the Middle Belt and the entire south and with the rampaging herders still looking unstoppable in their genocidal foray, a key issue for the 2019 contest is being framed unwittingly.
By the way, when PMB now harps so passionately about his generosity such that the Igbo who offered him miserly votes in 2015 ended up being ravished with four juicy cabinet posts, the puzzle is whether his typology also includes the national security council and other critical power centers whose membership is almost exclusively from a section of the country and one faith.
Such brazen imbalance, let it be restated, is at the heart of the now often stated alienation in the land. So, when such council meets at crunch moments such as this, what gives the other sections of the country the confidence that their cause would be championed?
The limit of sycophancy
Even by the often pathetic standards associated with eye-service in Nigeria, the stunt by a certain Atonte Diete-Spiff on January 15 must rank as simply bizarre.
Recall that no sooner had news broken in December that President Buhari’s son Yusuf was involved in a grave bike accident on the Abuja highway than the national airwaves turned a babel.
Almost immediately, career sycophants were stepping on genuine well-wishers to gain the attention of the First Family in the outpouring of sympathy and goodwill. They either caused words to be passed around that they had not recovered a bit from deep shock inflicted by reports of the sad news or directly issued statements detailing the great length they had gone to commission, at huge personal costs, platoons of prayer warriors to conjure Yusuf’s recovery as quickly as divinely possible.
Perhaps not wanting anything abridged or edited in the course of reportage, Diete-Spiff took out a whole full-page in the newspaper with the banner headline, “Yusuf Buhari Will Survive”. The novelty he added was rendering his own prayer points in a four-verse poem and in giant point-size.
Expectedly, as a footnote , he did not forget to indicate his e-mail address.
True, most faiths expressly believe that prayers are answered and that miracles do happen to those who believe. But none of the known holy books has ever told us prayers must be said on the roof-top and amplified with a mega-phone or publicized as newspaper advertorial to get answered.
There is a biblical name for those who act in that manner: the Pharisees.
To be sure, shared humanity would oblige everyone of us to stand with the Buharis in those trying moment. Only the children of Satan would not have rejoiced following reports that the young lad had healed and been discharged from the Abuja hospital.
Let it however be emphasized that God’s evident mercy on Yusuf could only have been triggered by genuine prayers said quietly before many Godly altars in nondescript homes across the land, by true Nigerians without big titles; certainly not by the bare-faced sycophants like Diete-Spiff looking for what to eat.
Nobel Laureate Prof. WOLE SOYINKA, in this piece titled ‘Impunity rides again’, flays the herdsmen killings in Benue State. Soyinka picks holes in the Federal Government’s reaction to the massacre, which he describes as history repeating itself.
It is happening all over again. History is repeating itself and, alas, within such an agonisingly short span of time. How often must we warn against the enervating lure of appeasement in face of aggression and will to dominate! I do not hesitate to draw attention to Volume III of my INTERVENTION Series, and to the chapter on The Unappeasable Price of Appeasement. There is little to add, but it does appear that even the tragically fulfilled warnings of the past leave no impression on leadership, not even when identical signs of impending cardiac arrest loom over the nation. Boko Haram was still at that stage of putative probes when cries of alarm emerged. Then the fashion ideologues of society deployed their distancing turns of phrase to rationalise what were so obviously discernable as an agenda of ruthless fundamentalism and internal domination. Boko Haram was a product of social inequities, they preached – one even chortled: We stand for justice, so we are all Boko Haram! We warned that – yes indeed – the inequities of society were indeed part of the story, but why do you close your eyes against other, and more critical malfunctions of the human mind, such as theocratic lunacy? Now it is happening again. The nation is being smothered in Vaseline when the diagnosis is so clearly – cancer!
We have been here before – now, ‘before’ is back with a vengeance. President Goodluck Jonathan refused to accept that marauders had carried off the nation’s daughters; President Muhammed Buhari and his government – including his Inspector-General of Police – in near identical denial, appear to believe that killer herdsmen who strike again and again at will from one corner of the nation to the other, are merely hot-tempered citizens whose scraps occasionally degenerate into “communal clashes” – I believe I have summarised him accurately. The marauders are naughty children who can be admonished, paternalistically, into good neighbourly conduct. Sometimes of course, the killers were also said be non-Nigerians after all. The contradictions are mind-boggling.
First the active policy of appeasement, then the language of endorsement. El Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, proudly announced that, on assuming office, he had raised a peace committee and successfully traced the herdsmen to locations outside Nigerian borders. He then made payments to them from state coffers to cure them of their homicidal urge which, according to these herdsmen, were reprisals for some ancient history and the loss of cattle through rustling. The public was up in arms against this astonishing revelation. I could only call to mind a statement by the same El Rufai after a prior election which led to a rampage in parts of the nation, and cost even the lives of National Youth Service corpers. They were hunted down by aggrieved mobs and even states had to organize rescue missions for their citizens. Countering protests that the nation owed a special duty of protection to her youth, especially those who are co-opted to serve the nation in any capacity, El Rufai’s comment then was: No life is more important than another. Today, that statement needs to be adjusted, to read perhaps – apologies to George Orwell: “All lives are equal, but a cow’s is more equal than others.”
This seems to be the government view, one that, overtly or by implication, is being amplified through act and pronouncement, through clamorous absence, by this administration. It appears to have infected even my good friend and highly capable Minister, Audu Ogbeh, however insidiously. What else does one make of his statements in an interview where he generously lays the blame for ongoing killings everywhere but at the feet of the actual perpetrators! His words, as carried by The Nation Newspapers:
“The inability of the government to pay attention to herdsmen and cow farming, unlike other developed countries, contributed to the killings.”
The Minister continued: “Over the years, we have not done much to look seriously into the issue of livestock development in the country….we may have done enough for the rice farmer, the cassava farmer, the maize farmer, the cocoa farmer, but we haven’t done enough for herdsmen, and that inability and omission on our part is resulting in the crisis we are witnessing today.”
No, no, not so, Audu! It is true that I called upon the government a week ago to stop passing the buck over the petroleum situation. I assure you however that I never intended that a reverse policy should lead to exonerating – or appearing to exonerate – mass killers, rapists and economic saboteurs – saboteurs, since their conduct subverts the efforts of others to economically secure their own existence, drives other producers off their land in fear and terror. This promises the same plague of starvation that afflicts zones of conflict all over this continent where liberally sown landmines prevent farmers from venturing near their prime source, the farm, often their only source of livelihood, and has created a whole population of amputees. At least, those victims in Angola, Mozambique and other former war theatres, mostly lived to tell the tale. These herdsmen, arrogant and unconscionable, have adopted a scorched-earth policy, so that those other producers – the cassava, cocoa, sorghum, rice etc farmers are brutally expelled from farm and dwelling.
Government neglect? You may not have intended it, but you made it sound like the full story. I applaud the plans of your ministry, I am in a position to know that much thought – and practical steps – have gone into long term plans for bringing about the creation of ‘ranches’, ‘colonies’ – whatever the name – including the special cultivation of fodder for animal feed and so on and on. However, the present national outrage is over impunity. It rejects the right of any set of people, for whatever reason, to take arms against their fellow men and women, to acknowledge their exploits in boastful and justifying accents and, in effect, promise more of the same as long as their terms and demands are not met. In plain language, they have declared war against the nation, and their weapon is undiluted terror. Why have they been permitted to become a menace to the rest of us? That is the issue!
Permit me to remind you that, early in 2016, an even more hideous massacre was perpetrated by this same Murder Incorporated – that is, a numerical climax to what had been a series across a number of Middle Belt and neighbouring states, with Benue taking the brunt of the butchery. A peace meeting was called, attended by the state government and security agencies of the nation, including the Inspector General of Police. This group attended – according to reports – with AK47s and other weapons of mass intimidation visible under their garments. They were neither disarmed nor turned back. They freely admitted the killings but justified them by claims that they had lost their cattle to the host community. It is important to emphasize that none of their spokesmen referred to any government neglect, such as refusal to pay subsidy for their cows or failure to accord them the same facilities that had been extended to cassava or millet farmers. Such are the monstrous beginnings of the culture of impunity. We are reaping, yet again, the consequences of such tolerance of the intolerable. Yes, there indeed the government is culpable, definitely guilty of “looking the other way”. Indeed, it must be held complicit.
This question is now current, and justified: just when is terror? I am not aware that IPOB came anywhere close to this homicidal propensity and will to dominance before it was declared a terrorist organisation. The international community rightly refused to go along with such an absurdity. For the avoidance of doubt, let me state right here, and yet again, that IPOB leadership is its own worst enemy. It repels public empathy, indeed, I suspect that it deliberately cultivates an obnoxious image, especially among its internet mouthers who make rational discourse impossible. However, as we pointed out at the time, the conduct of that movement, even at its most extreme, could by no means be reckoned as terrorism. By contrast, how do we categorize Myeti? How do we assess a mental state that cannot distinguish between a stolen cow – which is always recoverable – and human life, which is not. Villages have been depopulated far wider than those outside their operational zones can conceive. They swoop on sleeping settlements, kill and strut. They glory in their seeming supremacy. Cocoa farmers do not kill when there is a cocoa blight. Rice farmers, cassava and tomato farmers do not burn. The herdsmen cynically dredge up decades-old affronts – they did at the 2016 Benue “peace meeting” to justify the killings of innocents in the present – These crimes are treated like the norm. Once again, the nation is being massaged by specious rationalisations while the rampage intensifies and the spread spirals out of control. When we open the dailies tomorrow morning, there is certain to have been a new body count, to be followed by the arrogant justification of the Myeti Allah.
The warnings pile up, the distress signals have turned into a prolonged howl of despair and rage. The answer is not to be found in pietistic appeals to victims to avoid ‘hate language’ and divisive attributions. The sustained, killing monologue of the herdsmen is what is at issue. It must be curbed, decisively and without further evasiveness.
Yes, Jonathan only saw ‘ghosts’ when Boko Haram was already excising swathes of territory from the nation space and abducting school pupils. The ghosts of Jonathan seem poised to haunt the tenure of Mohammed Buhari.
The Kebbi Police Command has arrested a 23-year-old herdsman, Umar Muhammad, for allegedly beheading his friend in a dispute over a missing cow.
Its spokesman, Mr Suleiman Mustapha, who confirmed the arrest, alleged that Umar killed his friend, 22-year-old Mustapha Muhammad, in an uncompleted building along Kalgo road in Kebbi.
“We have arrested the suspect; he is currently being investigated and will soon be charged to court,” he told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday.
A family source told NAN that the victim had invited the suspect, who was his friend, to help in the rearing of cows given to him by a relation.
“Mustapha wanted to concentrate on rearing goats given to him by the same man, and invited his friend, Umar, to tend the cows.
“Umar, however, sold one of the cows without the consent of his friend, which resulted into a hot argument between them last Thursday.
“After the quarrel, Mustapha threatened to report Umar to the owner of the cows because it was not the first time he (Umar) had sold out cows without the consent of the owner,” the source said.
The source further told NAN that the suspect, who was angry over Mustapha’s threat, trailed him to an uncompleted building along Kalgo road on Friday last week, and attacked him with an axe.
“`The suspect trailed Mustapha to the uncompleted where they usually relax, and cut off his head.
“Mustapha was attacked while resting beside the tree,” the source told NAN.
The source said that the suspect thereafter returned home that Friday, without his friend.
“When we asked him of his friend, he told us that he left him in the bush.
“We started searching through the bush until we found the decomposing body in the uncompleted building.
“At first, he denied being responsible, but he later confessed to the crime and took us to where he buried Mustapha’s head, three days after the murder took place,” the source said. (NAN)
•Herd boys rush a sickly cow to the slaughter slab at the Oko-Oba Abattoir and Lairage
ON Monday, at 10.00 am, a lanky butcher picks his teeth in a stream of blood. His name is Taofeeq and he reeks of dung. His brown shirt drips with the blood of over 50 cows and his boots are smeared in gore and fecal mess of cow cadavers. The spatter of red masks his frame like splattered timestamps; grisly reminder of his vocation’s gothic rites.
“This morning, I have killed 50 cows. I am very fast. I can slit a cow’s throat and hack it to pieces in 10 minutes; limbs, offal and meat,” he says, kicking languidly at a rat nibbling on his merchandise: a bloody heap of cow tail, chopped brain and intestines.
The rat falls into an open sewer beside his slab; visibly rattled, it darts into a hole in the wall of the sewer, just in time to escape Taofeeq’s second strike.
Butchers wash cow meat in fetid gutter at the Ikpoba slope abattoir in Edo PHOTO: Jefferson UWOGHIREN
“Were yii ma ba oja je fun mi, meaning: This mad rodent will ruin my merchandise,” he says, skimming the expanse for prospective customers.
It is Taofeeq’s eighth year as a butcher and meat dealer at the Oko-Oba Abattoir and Lairage, Agege, Lagos; and “very few butchers here understand the business and lay of the land. I do,” he says, wading through animal gore and filth to the centre of his slaughter slab.
The blood on Taofeeq’s frame would elicit gasps and sharp yelps in another part of town. But amid the killing fields of the Oko Oba abattoir, his chilling frame pales to grislier forms.
“You get bloodier while cutting up cows. But you get used to it. My target is a 100 cows today,” he enthuses, in a tenor that suggests he dreads that the hours may pass quicker than before. If he falls behind his target, his day’s exploits may resound like failure.
“Every hour counts. When you’ve been here for a long while, you will understand that,” says Taofeeq, drawing the horn of an obstinate cow with equivalent force.
He thrusts his knife into the cow’s neck, slitting its throat in a deft stir that swishes like a stab. The dying animal kicks and wheezes in a final, gasp, beneath the stern glare and grasp of its slaughterer.
In a moment, the slab is caked in silence. Then with astonishing fierceness, Taofeeq hacks into the cow cadaver, like a street brawler decapitating fearsome adversary. The aggression from butcher to cow, man to animal, and the acquiescence of lifeless beast to sharp axe, resonates beyond the slab, melding with the din of the blood-clad slaughterhouse.
•At Yanyan abattoir in Abuja, FCT, butchers wash cattle meat in a stream of blood and mucky water
Across the expanse of the abattoir, men decapitate cattle with consummate ferocity. Nothing is spared: horns, bone, offal, skin, animal blood and dung, are destined for distinct uses.
In the racket of heavy axes, machetes and knives, precision is key. A rhythm arises.
The slaughter house mists with heat, animal gore and dung; and the air swarms with stench and missiles of flying bone fragments, innards and blood spatter.
None of the butchers and other abattoir workers adhere to slaughterhouse rules. None of them are putting on gloves, dedicated uniform or overall to distinguish and protect them according to task. They do not care about protecting the meat either. Thus cows are slaughtered and processed in the blood, intestinal waste and dung of previous slaughters.
Very few of the workers have rubber boots on their feet, many of them are in bathroom slippers and other flimsy soles while an even more daring breed wade barefoot in the sea of blood, dung and bone fragments.
Butchers bathe on cattle parts at Oko-Oba abattoir
Besides the insanitary meat processing culture, butchers carry meat on their backs and head from the slaughter slabs to the meat counters or point of sale in the abattoir’s retail section.
Butchers bathing on meat
Few paces from the slaughter slabs, several butchers and herd boys take their bath in the open, with water spilling from an overhead tank. As they do, spatters of grime, soap, animal blood and dung cleansed from their bodies, splash on displayed merchandise of cow tail, hide and intestines placed two paces from their open bath.
The women tending the wares are hardly bothered that the goods meant for human consumption are being bathed upon and polluted by bad soap wash.
•Rat scurries back into its hole to escape Butcher Taofeeq’s assault after ribbling on his meat merchandise at the Oko-Oba abattoir
Within the expanse, Adenike inhales the dank, putrid air, as the sun douses in an early drizzle. She is expecting retailers, the ones with deep pockets. “Three of my customers have called me. They will be here soon. They are food sellers in Orile and Dopemu Agege. They have been patronising me since I started work here seven years ago,” she says.
The meat seller sees nothing wrong with goings-on in the abattoir. “Nobody can just change it for us just like that (change the way business is done)…Things are better this way. It’s faster to kill animals in the open slabs. The customers can come and pick their choice. They can also see the transparent way we do business here,” she says.
•Employees of Botswana Meat Commission (BMC), Francis town abattoir process cow meat in a standard processing plant
Dangerous trade in sick and dead cattle
Amid the bustle of blood and frantic commerce, three herd boys wheel a sickly cow at frenzied pace, towards the abattoir’s crowded slabs. They dodge teeming human traffic as they hasten to beat two other carts bearing very sick cows ahead, to the slabs.
They do not wish to wait turns after the two crews in front, lest their cow dies before it is fed to the knife. They would like to pronounce ‘Bismillah’ on the sickly animal before its throat is slit. “It must not die before it gets to the slabs. If it dies before it is killed, it’s processed meat will never be considered halal (approved or sanctified meat). It becomes haram (forbidden) meat,” says Mahmud, a butcher.
Statistics shows that about 6,000 cattle are slaughtered across Lagos daily. About 1, 200 of the figure are slaughtered in the Oko Oba Abattoir and Lairage, which is arguably the biggest slaughter house in the country and one of the biggest in Africa.
•In flagrant disregard of global best practices, butchers slaughter deceased calf in Maiduguri abattoir, Borno State
However, of the 1, 200 cows killed and processed in the abattoir, about 200 are wheeled to the slab severely bruised, diseased or dead. Thus about 150 sickly cows and 50 dead cows are killed daily in the abattoir. Findings revealed that at least 15 out of every 100 cows slaughtered at the abattoir are unhealthy while five of every 100 cows are wheeled to the slabs as cadaver.
At the Oko Oba abattoir, dead cattle are sold at paltry price. “The price often ranges between N10, 000 and N28, 000 depending on its size. On the other hand, sick cattle may be sold to unsuspecting consumers at normal price.
“That is why some customers come to the market with intermediaries conversant with the business. The latter are able to identify sick or diseased cows and guide their clients to make the right choice,” says Rasheeda, who processes “saki” and other cow innards at the abattoir.
But streetwise customers purchase such diseased animals at a steal. They could purchase a cow that should sell between N250, 000 and N350, 000 for as low as N30, 000 to N80, 000, depending on the severity of its ailment and their bargaining skills. Ignorant buyers however, suffer the misfortune of buying a sick cow at the price of a healthy cow, says Akinde, a butcher and meat dealer.
“Usually, the suya sellers purchase the dead cows. This is because it’s cheaper to acquire. Many of them also look out for the sick cows. Sometimes, four of five of them may contribute to purchase an unhealthy cow at cheaper rate. They buy it and divide it among themselves. Many of such dead or diseased cows are used to make the suya that Lagosians eat,” he reveals.
Notwithstanding the burgeoning trade in dead and unhealthy cows, the rule at the abattoir is that such cattle should be cut and burnt, according to the butchers.
With an estimated 19 million cattle heads, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development revealed that Nigerians consume about 360,000 tonnes of beef yearly. This conservative figure is projected to rise to 1.3 million tonnes per year by 2050, some 260 per cent increase. But how safe is the meat we eat?
The Veterinary Council of Nigeria (VCN) has warned that many Nigerians might be consuming meat that could be dangerous to their health, given the unhealthy state of abattoirs in the country.
•A healthy cow is usually obstinate, violent and uneasy to tame on the slaughter slab
The Registrar of the council, Dr. Marcus Avong, recently disclosed that there were only three standard abattoirs in Nigeria, located in Lagos, Borno and Nassarawa states thus implying that only three standard abattoirs serve over 170 million Nigerians.
According to a recent media report that Lagos has a population of about 21 million, according to the National Population Commission (NPC) 2014 figures, about four million in Borno State and two million in Nassarawa State, the addition of these figures give 27 million, which implies that only 27 million Nigerians (about 16 per cent of the total population) have access to standard meat, while about 143 million Nigerians (representing about 84 per cent) access meat that may be injurious to their health.
The Nation’s investigations in Lagos, Calabar, Abuja, Enugu and other parts of the country however, reveal that meat accessed in the states’ presumably decent abattoirs might not be safe for consumption after all.
•Lagos Commissioner for Health, Oluwatoyin Suarau, faces an uphill task enforcing global best practices at the Oko-Oba abattoir and other slaughter houses in Lagos State
Despite Lagos government’s spirited efforts to institute a culture of hygiene and enforce standard regulations across the state’s abattoirs, the Oko Oba slaughterhouse which is the biggest in the state and the country, pulses in extreme lack of standards in operations, poor hygiene and lack of necessary tools and equipment for butchers and health workers.
Successive visits to the abattoir revealed unethical practices. There were no health officers on site to conduct ante-mortem and postmortem checks on cattle to ascertain if they were fit for human consumption.
Findings at the abattoir revealed a daily routine that fosters harmful practices that medical practitioners fear could endanger lives in Lagos city.
At the Nkonib-Unity Slaughter Market, Ndidem Usang Ext. Nkonib (Ikot Ansa) in Calabar, Cross River State, the situation isn’t different. Although the number of cows slaughtered daily in the abattoir is markedly smaller than what is obtainable in the Lagos abattoir, cattle are slaughtered and processed in filthy conditions at the slaughterhouse.
While some consumers stroll in to the abattoir’s decrepit expanse to purchase meat from wooden counters, many more troop to the slaughter slabs to have their pick of the processed cattle meat.
Prince Charles Etim, chairman of the butchers and abattoir workers, has been in the business for 20 years. But the slaughter house and market where he presides is two years old. “I run the abattoir in partnership with owners of the land, the Nkonib Ikot Ansa. My company, Unity Slaughter does business with them,” he says.
Etim bemoans the poor facilities in the abattoir and dearth of investment opportunities and support from the government. “We want greater access to loans so we can travel out and get more cattle. We can also use such loans to improve the facilities in this place,” he says.
Far from the Nkonib-Unity Slaughter Market, Nasarrawa Abattoir deals with similar problems. Emmanuel Umoh, chairman of the abattoir’s butcher’s union, laments declining business and the dearth of standard facilities in the slaughterhouse. He says business has become more fragmented leading to dwindling returns because the number of abattoirs in Calabar has grown from three big abattoirs to 15 substandard abattoirs.
“About 20, years ago, during my first tenure as chairman of this abattoir, we bought cows between N10, 000 and N20, 000; now, we buy one cow at the price of 15 or 20 cows, with each cow selling between N250, 000 and N350, 000,” he says.
•Old Kwatta Abattoir, Anambra
Umoh worries about the abattoirs’ inadequate facilities and he is particularly bothered by the widening gorge, caused by erosion, eating into the expanse of the abattoir. “We need government intervention here in order to improve the condition of this place,” says Umoh.
The Nation’s visit to Yanyan Abattoir in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) also reveals unsanitary meat processing activities by the abattoir workers. Cattle are slaughtered on dirty, crowded slabs and cow innards and skin are dragged through filth and blood pools to sale blocks after being washed in mucky water.
At the Ikpoba slope abattoir in Edo state, animals are slaughtered on foul slabs and washed in fetid open drainage. The Owerri Municipal abattoirs in Imo state also constitutes a health hazard. At the modern abattoir in the city, widely known as Somachi Slaughter House, an average of 30 cattle are killed daily. There are no health inspectors or vet doctors to conduct ante-mortem and postmortem examination on slaughtered cattle. Animals are decapitated and eviscerated on grimy slabs and burning and skinning commences immediately afterwards.
At the Maiduguri Main Abattoir in Borno state, most butchers and prospective buyers walk barefoot within the slaughter slabs. Only a small fraction of the abattoir workers and visitors wear slippers and rubber shoes.
Those who sustain injuries from knife wounds or bruises while struggling with obstinate cattle on the slabs, use torn polythene or nylon strips as bandage on their wounds, and they are often seen carrying meat on their backs and heads instead of using pans. Their work clothes are dirty and unwashed with accumulated debris from daily slaughtering activities. Besides, butchers wash their hands in dirty water, in the crevices on the killing floor of the abattoir.
PHOTOS: Olatunji OLOLADE Abayomi FAYESE and Library
There is no gainsaying that the country’s abattoir operations contravene best practices and global health standards. Besides poor meat processing methods, many of the abattoirs operate with open drainages that are often clogged with debris and maggots.
Most butchers are poor and have not received occupational training and because there is usually no compensation if bad meat is condemned, butchers react strongly and aggressively resist condemnation of diseased cattle and unwholesome meat, according to vets and health inspectors.
Several abattoir workers engage in unhygienic practices which directly put consumers of meat at risk. For example, it is common practice among butchers in Ibadan, Oyo state, to sprinkle fresh blood on old meat or dip large chunks of stale meat in fresh blood to make it appear fresh.
Also, in desperate bid to pass off diseased cattle as healthy animals, butchers puncture small holes in the body of the cattle and pump water into them thus making them look bloated and well fed.
Slaughterhouses in the country are also major sources of water and air pollution as they often discharge their effluent directly into streams or land which drains into surface and underground water.
The Nation’s findings in the country’s major abattoirs reveal gross and unchecked discharge of entire blood and gastrointestinal contents of slaughtered animals into nearby streams, rivers clogged, open drainages and surface soil.
For instance, residents of Ladoje and Oko Oba neighbourhoods of Agege, host to Nigeria’s largest abattoir, complain of polluted waters and a powerful stench.
“We find it difficult to breathe most times. Imagine waking up to a foul morning air and knowing the stench will stay with you throughout the day. Life here is hellish for most of us,” said Bisi Akamo, a retired civil servant.
Besides the stench emanating from the abattoir, ante-mortem and post-mortem inspections are hardly carried out on slaughtered cattle even as they are slaughtered and eviscerated in the open with carcasses processed on bare floor. Abattoir workers drag slaughtered cattle viscera through pooled blood, dung and intestinal wastes on the floor and animal innards are washed in abattoir drainages.
Butchers also slaughter calves and pregnant cows in flagrant disregard for regulations banning such practice.
Too much beef, unfit for export
According to the Director of Veterinary Services in the Enugu State Ministry of Agriculture, Dr. Emmanuel Onyeka, Nigeria has not been able to export its meat to other countries because the World Trade Organisation is not satisfied with the standard of meat processed in Nigeria.
Onyeka, who is also a veterinary doctor, has however called for a national meat law, which he said would make the WTO to allow Nigeria to export processed meat. He noted that such law, if enacted, would promote meat inspection and hygiene.
“I feel we need to have a national law on meat inspection and hygiene, which would improve ours to international standard so that our meat will qualify and the WTO will allow us to export our meats to foreign countries because with the standards we have in Nigeria now, we cannot export our meat. So, we need to upgrade the level of meat inspection and meat hygiene by having a national law.”
He also described abattoirs in the country as an eyesore, saying the way the meat is also being conveyed to the market is unhygienic as it exposes the meat to flies and other insects within the markets.
Public health expert, Dr. Babatunde Odusolu, argues that the current state of Nigerian abattoirs are unacceptable. “Contamination of meat from the slaughtered animal by microorganisms can occur when the meat gets contact with contents of the gastro-intestinal tract, equipment and utensils, workers garments and hands, the abattoir itself (e.g. air, floor drains, water drip from ceiling),” he says.
At the backdrop of the unpalatable situation, very few state governments across the country are making efforts to improve facilities in state abattoirs and reinvent their meat processing culture. For instance, the Anambra state governor, Willie Obiano, recently directed the State Commissioner for Health, Josephat Akabuike, to embark on comprehensive rehabilitation and standardisation of the state’s abattoirs soon after the latter renounced meat diet claiming: “It is suicidal to eat meat coming out from the dirty abattoirs.”
And while Nasarrawa State embarks upon similar renovation and standardisation drive, the Lagos state government ups its ante of similar enterprise. While Tunbosun Ogunbanwo, spokesperson of the state’s Ministry of Agriculture declines comment on the parlous state of the Oko Oba abattoir
Recently, the state’s Commissioner for Agriculture, Oluwatoyin Suarau, inaugurated an enforcement unit, in order to “develop, restructure and sanitise abattoirs and slaughter slabs in the state for improved operations and promote a healthy environment for red meat business.”
In February, the unit commenced its operation with the clampdown on illegal abattoirs, slaughter slabs and cattle markets in Ikorodu and Badagry areas, with the arrest of 24 butchers and cattle marketers. Processed meat and live cattle were also impounded during the raid.
According to the commissioner; “Ten butchers were arrested from illegal abattoirs by the enforcement team in Owutu, Ikorodu, while 14 butchers and marketers were arrested in the Badagry axis. The operation in the Badagry axis, affected illegal slaughter slabs at Seme J5 Zongo, Iya Afin and Ajara; and illegal animal markets at Iberekodo, Limka and tollgate.”
And in bid to guarantee effective abattoir management, Lagos state “trained over 400 butchers and live cattle dealers, drawn from various parts of the state in February on current trends in abattoir management.”
In the wake of these efforts, the state claims that beef sourced from state-accredited abattoirs, like the Oko Oba Abattoir and Lairage, are safe for food.
However, The Nation’s investigation reveals otherwise. Findings from successive visits to the state’s largest abattoir reveals that Lagosians consuming beef may be at risk of zoonotic infections. These are deadly diseases transmissible from animals to man through consumption.
The state government has exhibited great resolve to renovate the structure no doubt. But despite the new machines and slaughter slabs, filth remains a recurrent feature of the expansive slaughter house.
Filth remains a permanent feature of Lagos’ biggest slaughter house. Within its expanse, cultures clash on several fronts: hygiene against muck, butchers against animals, meat traders against consumers, who spill across its expanse every morning.
Spatially, and in outward simulation of a theatre round, butchers huddle per task; each cluster immersing in specificity of craft that unfolds like vistas of an eerie theatre.
Cattle cadaver simmer in cauldrons of fetid water atop open grates, knives hiss noisily against whetstones and skin of shaved animals. The muscles of young, veteran butchers ripple through sullied clothes as they hack through bones and horns of fresh slaughter, decorating the expanse like the gory scene of a battlefield massacre.
The clutter of motions and dissonance of noises render Africa’s biggest abattoir perhaps, visually encrusted and aurally dense, like a painter’s intricate collage of Nigeria’s food chain dystopia.
It may well be that we are approaching the end of times as we know it. Strange things are happening which defy reality and common sense. In a classic demonstration of animal warfare, a solitary herdsman in the new Rondel Republic unleashed his arsenal of unruly ruminants on a school and hell was let loose. The staff reportedly took to their heels.
Not to be cowed into submission, the cows headed for the classroom and promptly began teaching themselves. The pupils fled, abandoning the classroom to its new masters. It was quite a sight. Poor boys and girls, discretion is the better part of valour. The cows may well turn out to be suicide bombers in disguise. And in this part of the world, you never know when cows will shed old habits and become man-eating carnivores.
Oh dear, oh dear, snooper is very much aware of the fact that in the heat of savage polemics during the last election in Britain, Her Majesty’s Foreign Secretary, the rogue Boris Yeltsin, famously dismissed his opponent as an “Islington herbivore”. Whoops! The city ruminant promptly disappeared after the historic hiding never to be seen in public again. Its hide is now on display in Battersea after the hung parliament.
In desperation, snooper had turned to Okon to find out what this strange incident portends for a troubled nation.
“Look Okon, what does this mean? Cows in classroom?”
“Ha oga, na dat one dem dey call espirit dey cow”.
“Meaning what?” snooper snapped in irritation
“He mean say dem cow be spirit.” Okon sneered.
“Look Okon, they are chewing the curd!!!” snooper exclaimed.
“Oga cow no dey chew cord, cord na wire, na chalk dem dey chew”, the mad boy replied with a poker-faced relish.
“And what does this mean?” snooper wondered aloud.
“Ha oga he mean say education don kaput”, Okon sneered.
The Chairman of Kuje Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Mr. Shaban Tete has expressed shock over the stealing of 50 cattle in Kujekwa community worth N70 million after 20 gunmen invaded it.
The community, which is about 140 kilometers from Kuje town, was attacked by the gunmen at 7: 30 p.m penultimate Saturday.
Investigations revealed that one Mr. Wasika Sarki was short dead when he made attempts to stop the invaders.
Tete, while speaking with journalists in the affected community, said he was shocked when he received the sad news. He appealed to the villagers to remain calm, as the perpetrators will be apprehended and prosecuted. He added that such incidence was uncommon in the council.
“It is sad news to hear because cattle worth millions of Naira were stolen by people who have no regard for humanity.
“It became very necessary for the council authority to come all the way from Kuje town to sympathise with the people and see the level of damage done to the community.
“I appeal to the affected people to remain calm as the evildoers will be caught and will face the wrath of the law,” Ishaku said.
The council chief, however, said plans were underway to have police post in the community, even as he assured that adequate security measures would be taken in order to avert such occurrence in future.
He also urged the villagers to encourage the vigilance group in the area by monitoring strange faces coming into the community.
Some of the affected villagers said the gunmen who were armed with AK47 assault guns shot sporadically in the air in order to scare people away so that they would escape with the stolen cattle.
One of the affected people, Mr. Isa Balla, said 20 of his cows valued at N160, 000 each and 30 handsets were stolen by the invaders.
“I sell handsets and rear cows in this village so that I can take care of my family. But the thieves had taken away almost all I have labored for.
“The guns they were carrying were Ak47 and we do not have such guns in this village. Everybody ran for his life when they started shooting in the air,” Balla explained.
