Armed herdsmen reportedly killed two young girls and injured one in Gora Gan community of Zangon Kataf local government area of Kaduna state Friday 17, January 2020.
Reports said the armed herdsmen visited the Gora Gan community market during the day but did not buy anything, only to come back at night to shoot randomly and killed the two girls, wounding another young man.
Trouble started on December 7, when a farmer known as Mba Pama Kagun who went to his farm to inspect his beans farm did not return to the community. Youths from the Gora Gan, Gora Bafai and other surrounding Gora communities mobilised in search of the man to discover that the farm had been destroyed with traces of blood, indicating that the man had been murdered.
For weeks, there seemed to be no trace of the farmer until a month later, January 7, when hunters saw the corps by a cave in the Kauru hills of Kauru local government area of the state.
Speaking to Blueprint over the phone, Pastor Francis Baba, son to the deceased and a younger brother to the deceased, Mr Boman Hosea both said the corps was found in a sack with rope round its neck. They also said the corps did not totally decomposed because of the cold weather in the month of December in the Southern Kaduna hills which aided the preservation of the corps.
Baba said there were signs of cuts on his father’s head and the neck regions, and that he was recognised by the clothes he wore and the work tools he took to the farm which were all discovered in the sack near the cave.
He further stated that his father was likely to have been killed by the herders and put in a sack before being moved to another local government so as to prevent the community from tracing herders and causing them any harm.
That was the genesis to the fatal killing of the girls as another farmer had a week ago been threatened to be killed by herdsmen just as they had killed Mr Kagun.
“The farmer, whose crops were being eaten by the cattle of two herdsmen, approached them and they threaten to kill him like they did the other farmer whose corps was recently discovered,” he said.
The two herdsmen approached the farmer with machetes but before they could get to him, he brought out a catapult and fired at fired at the two and they all ran away leaving the third person who was a very young boy. The farmer took the boy to the Hakimi of Gan in person of Mr. Elias Gorah, who then filed a police report.
At the time of filing this report, it is not certain whether the boy was released or not before the shooting that took place claiming the lives of the two young women and injuring another young man.
Mobile police and soldiers have been mobilised to the communities to forestall reprisals by youth who are angry.
