From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
Senior Special Assistant to Governor Samuel Ortom on Animal Husbandry, Alhaji Shehu Tambaya on Sunday, expressed worry over renewed attacks on Benue communities by gunmen suspected to be herdsmen.
It would be recalled that several people had been killed and many injured in the last few weeks following suspected Herdsmen attacks on some Benue communities.
Tambaya who lamented that the incessant attacks was discouraging Benue farmers from going to farm as many of them had been killed on their farms in the past, warned that the new trend, if not checked, was capable of causing serious famine in the country.
“These attacks are becoming too many and this is very worrisome because the people can no longer go to their farms. How can a whole food basket state of the nation not being able to produce food? Is that not acute famine waiting to happen?
“Our farming community have all been driven into the IDP camps and even there, they are still being attacked. Why can’t the Herdsmen simply obey the Benue’s Grazing law and allow peace to reign in this state?
The Governor’s aide who also berated the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mallam Garba Shehu for the planned opening up of grazing routes across the country wondered how possible that would be in the 21st century when almost all the supposed routes have been taken over by Infrastructural development.
Tambaya who insisted that Benue has no land that had been gazetted as grazing routes, urged the Presidential aide to rather be talking of how to settle the herdsmen in ranches so that they can have better lives and their cattle can also produce better.