Ogoni Women Wail Over Herdsmen Attacks
3 min read
Edith CHUKU
Aggrieved women of Luusue Sogho Community in khana Local Government Area of Ogoniland in Rivers State, have expressed helplessness over the alleged incessant attacks, killing and raping of young girls, allegedly by herdsmen.
The women narrated their ordeals in an interview with newsmen where they described their situation as helpless, saying they do not know where nor whom to run to for help.
A native of Luusue Sogho, Mrs Glory Basi, lamented that “the issue of herdsmen we are having in our community is so serious that we don’t know where to place our hands, we don’t know who to run to and where to start the matter from.
“The herdsmen that are in our communities, in my own community Luusue Sogho in Khana LGA they are so terrible that our women we are not save in the farm. When we go to farm, the moment they destroy our cassava and you make noise or you just open your mouth and tell them that they destroyed your cassava they will want to kill you in the farm.”
Basi lamented that the herdsmen were raping their girls. She said “even our men, those of our men that are not strong to stand before them they kill them automatically, and one funny thing that we are seeing about the herdsmen; it’s the same our community people that are collecting money from these herdsmen, that are inviting them to our farm.”
She explained that “as of last week when they destroyed our farm crops and we went to the Police, the Police invited the main man that is caring for their cows and the man came pricing whole cassava on two plots of land 30,000 naira, 30,000 naira is money for just two basins of Garri this period, Garri is too expensive in our community now.
“The herdsmen even as they pay the money the man that brought them even collected the money into his own account and refused to give the people that owns the cassava that was destroyed. What we are passing through is a terrible one.
“We are suffering, mostly our women, that has kept us under hunger and our children, we can no longer go to the farm because we are afraid, we are careful of our lives, nobody should kill us because we are going to farm, so since we cannot go to the farm again to plant and to get food for our children, our children become sick every day, some of them cannot continue their education, we cannot train them again because we don’t have money to pay for their school fees and food.”
In her plea, the Luusue Sogho woman called on the state and federal government to immediately intervene by driving the herdsmen out of their community to enable them farm peacefully to sustain their family.
Basi expressed the regret that because of the chieftaincy tussle in their community, their traditional ruler has been unable to attend to the matter for fear of been attacked.
