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By Yusuf Salihu Sansani, Jalingo
One person has reportedly been killed by Herders and fourteen others injured in a renewed crisis between farmers and herdsmen in Yelwa Abbare community of Ardo Kola Local Government Area, Taraba State.
The crisis was said to have started after a herder took his cattles into a rice farms belonging to the people of the community and was asked to bring them out, but he refused which led to huge damage by the cattles.
Narrating his ordeals, one of the victims of the crisis, Haruna Yusuf said, they were harvesting rice when a herder came to pass through their farms with his cattles but they prevented him from doing so because there was no cattle route through the farms but the herder insisted and pushed his cattles into some portion of the rice farms that have not been harvested, they asked him to go back but he refused.
Haruna Yusuf stated as a result of his refusal to take away his cows, crisis ensued between the herders and farmers, and beating and bashing one another and in the process a herder cut off a finger of a youth farmer and hit another one on the head and fell down, seeing that, one of the farmer reacted by hitting the herder down and also hit another one after which the herders left with the cattles with a vow to take revenge.
Another victim Muhammad Ibrahim who said he came to Taraban State from Daye village in Potiskum Local Govermment Area of Yobe State said, they were working as labourers in the rice farms in Yelwa Abbare to look for What to eat with their families when the herders regrouped at midnight on Thursday and launched an attack on the over forty farm settlements housing over two hundred labourers, beating them to pop with sticks and cutting them with cutlasses.
The victim said majority of them took to their hills in different directions into the bush and the lucky ones went to Yelwa Abbare village while the wounded were left unattended.
He said they went back to the farms and carried their wounded colleagues including the deceased Malam Hassan Jos who was severely cut on his forehead and died shortly on arrival in the village and was buried at the Jeka-da-Fari graveyard Jalingo.
Both victims Malam Haruna Yusuf and Muhammad Ibrahim decried the rampant cases of banditry particularly in Yelwa Abbare community and appealed to all the authorities concerned and the Taraba State Government to take proactive measures to curtail the ugly trend and to sympathizes with the masses who left their places of origin to seek for their daily bread in Taraba State.