Anxiety in the North-west

Farmers in the far-northern areas of Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto states are currently facing great difficulties with an urgent need for immediate assistance and succor, this is because incessant abductions and kidnapping sprees perpetrated by unknown and unidentified hoodlums make them extremely upset, anxious and alarmed about their safety and continuous wellbeing. In less than two weeks scores of villagers, including thirty-five women have been seized and forcibly taken away while working on their fields, harvesting crops and transporting them to their homes. The two unfortunate incidences happed in Maru Local Government Area

Such unsuspecting villagers easily fall victims of devious and stealthy gunmen that storm their locality on motor-bikes, shooting sporadically into the air before rounding them off and subsequently herding them to unknown or unfamiliar destinations. It takes quite a while before contact is established with their relatives and handsome amount of money must change hands before they could get their freedom. In most cases the saga ends fatally as the victims were either left by the roadside to die or easily shot after proving difficult and uncooperative.

Such had been the fate that befell twelve farm laborers whisked away by armed bandits in one of the latest attacks in ‘Yar Tashar Sahabi Village, in Dansadau Emirate of Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara State. The narrative of the unskilled workers was not only pathetic but full of graphic revelation about the sequences of difficult events that unfolded during their long-drawn-out ordeals and harrowing experiences. In this particular case, one of the victims was lucky to be released on account of serious injuries he sustained on his leg as he fell off into a deep and dangerous valley. His release was, however, not unconditional. He was sent on a message to the farm owner who employed them to thrash his guinea corn harvest with a mobile telephone number for getting in contact with the gangsters.

Although thirty out of the thirty-five women in Matankari Village in Maru Local Government Area have been released shortly after their capture without paying any ransom or exerted effort by the police and the local vigilante, nothing was established about the abductors’ hideouts or places of escape and their identities remained a mystery.
Unremitting attacks on the remote Sahelian and semi-savannah localities in Zamfara State are becoming increasingly worrisome especially as they had been targeting large herds of cattle and prosperous village traders. In fact, the seeming hopelessness of security personnel in holding the thugs’ nefarious activities in check has led them into believing that they could hold the entire region to ransom and blackmail the Zamfara State government into submission. Therefore, the locals are always worried, living in morbid fear of the merciless attackers whom they believe are pervasive and ostensibly present everywhere throughout the neighborhood.

In fact, they are increasingly losing hope on the ability of the security forces to prevent such attacks or even to repel them. Presently, rural folks, comprising of peasant farmers and itinerant artisans, could not work on the fields and farmsteads freely without fear of attacks. These rural folks have already suffered from massive violent attacks during the planting season which forced them to forsake their farmlands to lie fallow or left unseeded after plowing, or uncultivated. The resultant effect of this unfortunate development was poor harvest arising from incomplete cropping during the farming season. Consequently, the storehouses of most rural households remained empty and many people were extremely famished and had to endure severe hunger and absolute starvation.
It is a pity, even in the localities where the attacks were not as severe and irregular; the fields yielded moderate crops which the farmers could not sufficiently reap, and even if they mobilize to cut and gather the produce they are again forcefully prevented from doing so by gun-totting thugs riding on motor-bikes that may eventually turn abductors. In that way rural life dominated by or related to farming and other allied activities is rendered insecure and dangerous.

The populace is systematically forced to remain indoors, submitting themselves to deprivation and hunger in the midst of plenty.
Zamfara State is unarguably the center of cattle grazing and the production of grains and cereals in Northern Nigeria, but regrettably all these thriving trades are dying in the face of violence and unprecedented banditry meted out to permanent farmers and inescapable herding nomads that abound there. The government needs to take urgent proactive measures to stem this ugly trend which has all the potentials of transforming into greater calamity capable of destabilizing the entire northwestern zone. What is currently obtainable in the northeast and in the Middle Belt regions should be a spur for pricking the government into action.