Hassan Ya’u, a 42-year-old farmer who grows maize and sesame seeds in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State, was tending to his crops earlier this month when dozens of armed men on motorcycles headed towards his plot and started shooting at close range.
Ya’u and fellow farmer Musa Nasidi managed to escape, but at least 50 people – many of them farmers working in their fields – were killed in the attack, the latest in a series of deadly incursions into agricultural areas. An unknown number of people were kidnapped during the assault, which was carried out in broad daylight.
Ya’u and Nasidi said the gunmen had attacked their farming community of Kankara because the farmers had not paid a tax imposed by the armed gang.
Such incursions are forcing many farmers to abandon their fields, contributing to rising food prices and soaring inflation, as Nigeria faces its worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
“They set fire to my produce and took away food worth about 4 million naira ($2,739.73),” said Ya’u, who took refuge in the town of Daura, nearly 200 km (124 miles) from Kankara.
“I have no access to my farm because bandits have taken control of the area. Everything has been ruined,” added the father of 13 who faces an uncertain future.
The armed gangs demand up to three million naira per village, depending on its size, to allow farmers to work.
“Farmers are even forming vigilante groups to ensure they can access farms, but it is still very difficult,” said Kabir Ibrahim, president of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria.
Northern Nigeria produces most of the country’s staple products, such as rice, yam and maize, but it is also its most unstable region, as armed gangs of kidnappers attack and pillage villages in the northwest , while Islamic militants cause havoc in the northeast.
Nasidi, 36, fled near the town of Katsina after the Kankara attack.
He used to harvest about 400 bags of peanuts, 80 bags of sesame seeds and 200 bags of corn, he said, but now faces a bleak year after part of his 8.5-hectare farm was given to flames from bandits.
“The situation is beyond our control and I had no choice but to leave Kankara because our lives were in danger,” Nasidi told Reuters.
A World Food Program report on the outlook for acute food insecurity globally said Nigeria has joined the world’s “hunger hotspots”, which analysts attribute to insecurity in agricultural areas and high costs of seeds, fertilizers, chemicals and diesel.
Lagos-based consultancy SBM Intelligence said 1,356 farmers have been killed in Nigeria since 2020. 137 deaths have been recorded this year, adding that farming is becoming a dangerous occupation.
“The risk is very serious,” said Confidence McHarry, SBM’s principal security analyst, adding that the gunmen also attacked farmers “on suspicion of collaborating with the military.”
Defense spokesman Major General Edward Buba said that with the rainy season underway, the military was prioritizing the safety of farmers.
“The farmers’ union is engaging in the armed forces’ farm protection plan to make the most of the rainy season,” he said, without elaborating.
But for 22-year-old farmer Abdulaziz Gora in Zamfara State, near Katsina, there is little hope of returning to his farm. He moved to the state capital, Gusau, after a violent attack on his village in May, abandoning his soybean and corn crops.
“Anyone caught there risks being kidnapped or killed,” he said.
(1 dollar = 1,460.0000 naira)
