Farmers in Katsina state are complaining of bandit activity that prevents them from going to their farms to cultivate food.

In an interview with newsmen, farmers claim that bandits raid their farms, abducting, killing, or taxing them before they can even begin to produce their land.

According to a reports, from the previous farming season, every home in Batsarin-Alhaji had to pay N500 to the robbers. Following that, the bandits asked that the locals provide fertilizer. To buy fertilizer, the peasants had to levy a tax on themselves.

Sa’adu Nuhu Batsari, 65, a large-scale farmer told the publication he stopped tilling three of his farms of 20 hectares each for over two years due to insecurity, lamenting that the heightened banditry is driving both big and subsistence farmers out of farming.

“Once you’re on the farm these people would come and abduct, kill or harass you. I abandoned my farms that are deep inside the bush and now work on the one close to town that is only two hectares. The constant threat stopped me from going to the farm”he said

Sani Muslim Batsari, Chairman of Batsari Local Development Association, also lamented that he has been forced to stop cultivating his big farms in the bush in the last two years due to the worsening insecurity situation in Batsari.

“I was harvesting almost 300 bags, but now I harvest only 50 bags or less in my small farm that’s closer to the town.

“Bandits have taken over many forests and cleared them for farming. Some of them can harvest 3,000 bags of grains. Some villagers confided in us that these bandits have hijacked their farms without paying a kobo to them.

“Their activities are taking a toll on our well-being; they have led to shortage of food and skyrocketing prices and lack of menial jobs for your youth as the large-scale farmers that employ hundreds of them have since abandoned the farms.

“President Buhari had, during the onset of the rainy season, assured us that we would go back to our farms this season. Alas, that has remained a mirage! I can categorically tell you that now more than 70 per cent of farmers in Batsari LG have stopped farming,’’ he lamented.

Muhammed Auwal, 55, a farmer in Nahuta village said from the last farming season, farmers in his village were asked to pay tax to bandits to access their farms but that didn’t protect them from attacks by the bandits.

“They’d seize our cattle or motorbikes. This season, they asked our neighbouring village, Kasai, to contribute money and buy fertilizer for them which they did.

Last season, every household in Nahuta had to pay N1,000 and we contributed more than N2 million as tax for the bandits which we delivered to them before they allowed us to farm. But this season, we’re lucky because they didn’t ask for tax from us maybe because soldiers have been deployed to our community. But villages surrounding us are still battling with these insecurity issues.”

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