…“We’re afraid of bandits,” Philip (farmer) laments.
by Achadu Gabriel, Kaduna
As the country is besieged with escalated terrorism and banditry business of kidnapping of Nigerians for ransom endlessly, farmers, nationwide have turned to full-scale domestic farming activities for the survival of their families.
In Kaduna, most homes, streets and roadsides have been taken over and converted to farmlands as farmers-turned domestic farming now use available spaces to cultivate crops as means of survival.
In some cases, even entrance spaces into personal residences and flats of houses have been cultivated by the landlords, in order to produce foods to meet family needs, not minding the resultant implications of mosques and other insects using the crops as breeding ‘harbors.’
Federal roadsides and highways are not spared of this development, as farmers, fearing that they may be kidnapped by bandits from their original farmlands in bushes, stay back at home and continue to expand on their domestic farming activities against their wishes and structural defect on their buildings.
Consequently, there is a huge increase in the current domestic farming activities – for yams, cassava, and all sorts of crops.
The implications are that the situation may lead to serious erosion of the roads overtime due the farming activities side-by-side with roads and streets.
While speaking to journalist, a farmer-cum politician, Philip Dauda Ladan, said the fear of people going into the bushes to farm and risk being kidnapped by terrorists now is quite high in the state.
Philip, aka “Pastor/Philip Booster,” who also is Secretary NNPP Kaduna State, lamented that, to feed a family with domestic farming is so difficult, as they only do that for survival.
“It’s true, because people are afraid to go inside the bushes to farm. I remembered my uncle working as Kaduna Vigilante Service (KADVIS); I was looking for a place to farm. And I asked him: can you, please, get me a space to farm? He said, “Yes; but the problem is that, if I go there they will carry me.”
“I said why? He said the truth is that, he too wants to farm, but he cannot go there because even the community within the area where he has about 3-5 hectares of land, he cannot go there in Chikun LGA here, because of the bandits.
“That, he doesn’t want anything to happen to me. So he will not allow me to go and farm there. So, I’ve found an easy place to now farm close to my house – by roadsides.
“Now, I am farming in NNPP quarters, even though we have a lot of challenges there. The people managing the area sometimes come and stop us, saying that they are afraid one day somebody may come and claim the he owns the land.
“It’s a verse busy land. We kill a lot of snakes to farm there. Even piton can be found there. Even though, it’s not enough, we are just farming for survival; it’s just for our consumption only.
“Roadsides is not up to even a plot to bring enough to feed a family. So, we are facing a very tough time. Birds, chickens and other domestic animals are problems,” he lamented.
He, therefore, advised that government should end the insecurity soon for people to farm to feed and make sale out of surplus for better living.