About 40 farmers have been killed while the whereabouts of many others could not be ascertained at press time after Boko Haram/Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) terrorists attacked Dumba, a farming settlement in Kukawa local government area of Borno State.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, an eyewitness who happened to be one of the farmers that escaped the attack, said the terrorists stormed the area at about 3pm on Sunday afternoon with sophisticated weapons and rounded them up.
He said the terrorists, before embarking on a shooting spree, told them that farming activities, which according to them was banned, has not been lifted in the area, hence the terrorists said that anyone found farming there henceforth would be killed.
“We are the people farming at Dumba. Today (Sunday), the terrorists came and met us in the area. They chased us out of the farm and said that they had not lifted the ban on farming in the area. They said any farmer found in the area henceforth would be killed.
“They killed many of our farmers. It was in the night that we ran to soldiers and Civilian Joint Taskforce (CJTF) members who assisted in taking us to a safer place.
“We were farming together with those killed, God saved me. The dead bodies that I counted were about 40 of them. The rest that were shot in the bush and those that escaped with gunshot wounds could not be accounted for,” he narrated.
Also, craving anonymity, a member of the CJTF, who participated in rescuing the survivors, said such attacks on the farmers by the terrorists have been a recurring issue, adding that at times the terrorists would kill up to 10 of the farmers, and that such killings usually go unreported, but that the alarming rate of the present killings pushed them to voice out the challenges the farmers, especially fishermen were going through in the Kukawa local government area of the State.
“It was around 3pm that the attack occured, and it was around 5pm that the survivors reached us. We used boat to ferry them to a safer place together with the help from the military. About 200 of them that escaped were rescued. They told us that over 40 of them were killed. They are mostly fishermen and crop farmers,” said the CJTF member.
LEADERSHIP reports that the Dumba community is about 7km to the popular Baga fishing community where a large scale of fishing takes place due to the riverine nature of the local government area which borders Republic of Chad.
It was from the Baga fishing community that smoked fish are brought to Maidiguri, which then formed part of the major revenue of the Borno State government as fish sellers from across the country thronged the city for fish business.
But with the eruption of the Boko Haram insurgency that strangulated many business activities in the state, many of the dry fish merchants from across the country deserted the state, as the Baga fishing community, where the supplies were coming from, became a business centre for the terrorists, who thwarts fishing activities in the area by imposing levies on the fishermen, as well as banning of fishing.
LEADERSHIP recalls that the Nigerian military once imposed ban on movement of smoked fish from the Baga axis after the military discovered that the terrorists took over the fishing activities from locals and used the income generated to boost their dwindling economic base following onslaught on their logistics by the Nigerian troops.
As at the time of this report, no statement has been issued by the concerned authorities about the attack.
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