• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Foreigners burning farms, animals and wrecking havocs in Niger state – Bello

Foreigners burning farms, animals and wrecking havocs in Niger state – Bello

The worsening security situation in Nigeria, assumed a new dimension on Wednesday with revelations of new dynamics to the criminal activities, as foreigners, mainly Fulani from Benin Republic, Sudan and Mali are being fingered for burning farms, killing animals and wrecking havocs in rural areas.

Niger State Governor, Sani Bello, revealed this on Wednesday while fielding questions from State House Correspondents, after briefing President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja

Bello who identified the bandits as Fulani’s from these nations, lamented that security operatives are studying to unravel the motives behind the actions of the criminals who he said started with armed robbery, before moving into cattle rustling and then to kidnapping as a means of getting money.

Niger state which is made up of 73,000 square kilometers, has the size of the entire south-south and south east region combined, with some of the local governments covering about 6,000 to 7,000 square kilometers.

For example the Bobi grazing reserve which is a Programme between state government, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the federal government, was allocated to herders for cattle grazing to reduce the movement of cattle from one area to the other so as to avoid herders, farmers conflict.

According to Bello, the location has now become dean for the bandits.

“ So most of the bandits have started focusing their attention on the Bobi grazing reserve which i have also discussed with Mr. President. Because we have investors that have started investing in terms of money, equipment, processing facilities. We do not want to discourage them so we applied most of our resources and efforts towards protecting the grazing reserve.”

According to Bello, the new trend constitutes danger to the nation’s food security drives, with the effect of further impeding on efforts to halt the rising food inflation which is hovering around 17.6%.

Read also: Fighting hidden hunger: Novel industry approaches to addressing the challenge

“But recently, the trend has changed, they started burning farms and animals. So this has given me some concerns and at the same time it has kept me thinking, what is the motive. I can understand if you kidnap you are looking for money but when you burn farms, then there is something else happening. Or when you kill animals, they go to villages and kill animals, they don’t steal. So if you stop people from going to farms it means you are trying to deprive that nation of food security.

“Why will someone wants to deprive people of food security? Niger State has the capacity of feeding the entire country. We have the water bodies for dry season farming, we produce a lot of rice, maize but I am worried because this year most of the farmers did not have the opportunity to go to their farms to harvest even when they planted.

So the bandits torch the farms, they just burned everything”

The marauding Fulani’s have also resorted to slamming ransom on farmers before they are allowed to go into their farms to harvest their crops

“So, what they do is that they go to a community and say we will allow you go to farm but you have to pay some money”

Security operatives were said to have identified and destroyed some of the camps and those camps.

“But we are not out of the woods yet, they come in pockets this time around and on daily basis we have five to six attacks. Again, you cannot attached values to human lives, and they kill innocent people. When you rob and leave them alive is one thing but when you go and just kill, that also sends a very terrible signal. So there is serious mayhem being caused by this bandits.”

“In one particular case and I always tell our security agents when they make an arrest to study the minds of the bandits and to ask why. But one particular case we arrested bandits that are foreigners as far as Sudan and Mali and they came on motor cycles. They are being recruited through social media, through Facebook in some cases and because they confessed to this.

“In my own opinion, the banditry activities differ from place to place. Some are cattle rustlers, some believe they are fighting some kind of jihadist activity, some believe they are fighting corruption, they see any uniform person, any political office holder as corrupt. So when you ask them you get different responses or different answers. Anyways, we have a problem for whatever the reason is, it’s a major problem and it must stop”

The bandits are said to be targeting Nigeria’s agricultural rich region, including Niger, Kaduna, Zamfara, Katsina, states reputed to produce agricultural products for the country.

To tackle the challenges, the Nigeria government is said to be deploying hi-tech equipment for surveillance that will identify and detect the exact location and position of the camps to enable the forces target and destroy their camps.

“The most logical thing to do is to use technology, it may be more expensive but I think it will worth it. So these are the kind of areas I hope the Federal Government can support.
Bello revealed that the State ordered some drones to back the federal government’s efforts at neutralizing the bandits, but lamented that the slow process of certification has delayed their deployments

“ Again when you order drones you need support of the Federal Government because you will be required to get end user certificate, the documentation takes a long process.

“Our drone has been ready for almost three months now, we are not able to bring it because of documentation issues. So these are the kind of interventions we seek support.