Benue farmers seek govt’s help to regain lost farms

File Photo: Some Fulani Herdsmen on a Nigerian road

Farmers in Ayiin, Logo Local Government Area of Benue have appealed for the state government’s support in regaining their farms after the herdsmen and farmers crisis in the area.

Speaking in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Logo on Wednesday, the farmers urged the government to provide the area also with maximum security.

They also appealed to the government to provide the community with an access road to boost their economic activities.

Mr James Agara, a young farmer and a fresh graduate of the College‎ of Agriculture, Yandev, Gboko, said that government’s support would help avert a recurrence of such crisis.

“We are pleading to help us because already we are down and we are looking just for help so that we can start up and gain something.

“Financially, we are not buoyant enough to say we can leave the grazing areas and start looking for areas to farm so if they will aid us, we will be very happy.

“Because up till this moment, it is not advisable or good to work at the boundary of the river basin because we do not know, next time it could be more horrible than what we just experienced.”

Also speaking, Mrs. Gloria Ngwutor, the President, NKST Widows Cooperative Group said that after the crisis, the widows had not been going to their farms.

“Some of us widows visited our farms for the first time just last Saturday to see and evaluate the situation of things.

“We only returned a few weeks ago after being displaced from our homes by the crisis; I put my family in a car and drove away from the community where we slept on the road.”

Ngwutor, who is also a retired civil servant said that the major problem facing the community was the lack of transportation to the market in the city to enable them sell their farm produce.

She noted that widows in the cooperative were very lucky as the local government provided them with fertiliser and other inputs on loan.

“This year they gave us 50 bags at N4, 000 per bag and we shall pay back after harvest.”

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