Food scarcity looms in South East over attacks on farmers by herdsmen — ASETU

Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) has raised the alarm of imminent food scarcity and hunger in the South East following   persistent attacks on farmers by armed herdsmen.

The group, in a statement by its National President,f Emeka Diwe and Secretary, Gideon Adikwuru, said farmers in the region, especially women have abandoned their farmlands for fear of molestation or killing by rampaging Fulani herders who invade farmlands looking for pasture for their cattle.

ASETU which decried the rise in insecurity in recent months in the zone, said if the attacks on farmers was not stopped, the region would be faced with food supply crisis.

“Agricultural productivity has fallen so badly because rural farmers have no illusion that their lives are no longer safe working on their farmlands. With its attendant impact on food security, hunger has become the lot of vast majority of our people. Day after day, lives of our people are unnecessarily lost in the hands of bandits, herdsmen and insurgents..Only last week, another reprehensible attack by herdsmen occurred in Ebonyi State. The inability of the authorities to rise to the occasion and bring the perpetrators to book has now pushed women of the affected communities into the streets to protest and register their disgust and frustrations with a sovereign nation which has displayed unchanging incapacitation to deploy its coercive apparatus to protect its ostensible citizens,” the group said.

The group also lamented the precarious situation Igbo had found itself in Nigeria even as the country clocked 60.

“We see ourselves in a Nigeria that is now defined and defiled by unbearable injustices against  the Igbo. A section of this country has monopolised all the instruments of state and all the resources of the country and has imposed itself on the rest of the country and has forged a master-servant relationship between itself and the rest of the ethnic nationalities.

“Igbo people have been marginalised in virtually all the facets of national life. Our communities are randomly sacked, farmlands destroyed, women raped and people butchered in their sleep by Fulani herdsmen, yet the Federal Government does not budge. But when our youths raise a flag in protest against the humiliations, discrimination and deprivation which we face in Nigeria, they are hurriedly termed terrorists and slaughtered ruthlessly.

“Sixty years after Independence, Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder. No nation thrives on outrageous injustices of Nigeria’s dimension and proportion. Political independence has failed to deliver to our people the nation which our forebears fought for. It has left the people with aborted dreams and shattered hopes, even as our people keep longing for a better tomorrow and a better nation.”   (Daily Sun)