AT least half a dozen people have sustained grievous injuries in Abia State following a fresh clash between Fulani cattle herdsmen and the local farming community of Ndi Okereke Abam that involved the widespread use of machetes and firearms.
In another gruesome attack, the herdsmen were said to have launched an assault on the community firing gunshots and hacking people. Community leaders accused the herdsmen of not only invading their farms with their cattle but also uprooting their cassava plants to feed their cattle.
Narrating the incident, Chief Chukwuma Okubi, the president of Ndi Okereke Abam Town Union, alleged that the herdsmen were in the habit of leading their cattle into farms. He said that the community had in the past asked the herdsmen to leave due to their destructive activities but that they later returned with a promise not to destroy the crops, saying that they had kept their promise of living peacefully until last Friday.
Chief Okubi said: “They left the grass they normally graze on to destroy the crops which are our only source of livelihood. Last Friday, when one of our men went to his farm with his family members to harvest their rice, he saw that the herdsmen had led their cattle to feed on the crop.
"The plea of the farmer to the herdsmen to take the cattle away from the rice farm fell on deaf ears. Instead they inflicted machete cuts on the man.”
He added that the alarm raised by the family attracted the attention of youths, who engaged the herdsmen, who then opened fire on them leaving six of them fatally wounded. Chief Okubi said the timely arrival of the state chairman of the Farmers/Herdsmen Committee, the Abia State police commissioner Leye Oyebade and a team of policemen from Arochukwu, led by the divisional police officer saved the community from more casualties.
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