SaharaReporters gathered that farmers and residents of Dugun Mu’azu community and other neighbourhoods in the Sabuwa local government area of Katsina had been enduring this without any help from the police or other security agencies.
Farmers in some communities in Zamfara State, northwest Nigeria have resorted to harvesting their produce before the due time owing to persistent cattle invasions by armed herders on their farmland.
SaharaReporters gathered that farmers and residents of Dugun Mu’azu community and other neighbourhoods in the Sabuwa local government area of Katsina had been enduring this without any help from the police or other security agencies.
The affected areas form part of the large stretches of ungoverned land area in the country, with about 300,000 policemen and women to police a country with a population of about 200 million.
A large number of police personnel are also assigned to VIPs including politicians, businesspeople, musicians and other celebrities, leaving the masses with the few personnel left.
According to a post shared on Facebook by a user, Dan Arewa, the herders who are always armed deliberately direct their animals to the farms to graze.
Dan Arewa added that the herders instantly kill any farmers who resist or try to prevent their cattle from eating crops or grazing on their farms.
He wrote: “The way the people of Dugun Muazu, and other areas in Sabua local government Katsina state, are removing the use of their farms without preparation, as a result of the way thieves send cattle to their farms to eat the fruit.
“Speak and they will shoot you or slap someone.”
“In Sabuwa LGA Katsina state, farmers are harvesting their farms before it is ripe for harvest, as Fulani herders who are heavily armed kept letting their cattle loose to graze on their farms and instantly kill farmers who resist. “Some farmers had their entire families eliminated for protecting their farms,” a source said.
However, efforts to get the spokesperson for the state police command on the phone, to find out what they had been doing to protect local farmers from armed herders were not successful.
Farmer-herders clashes are still prevalent in Nigeria despite the promise made by Bola Tinubu during his inauguration speech to introduce "best modern practices" to solve the problem.
President Tinubu in his speech promised that agricultural hubs would be constructed to enhance productivity, but none of that has been done more than five months into his administration.