Some farmers in Katsina State have decried the negative impact of banditry on farming activities in the state.
According to them, bandits have stopped them from going to their farms to cultivate food items.
The farmers, in an interview with Daily Trust, stated that bandits stormed their farms to either abduct them, kill them or tax them before they could even cultivate on their farms.
They further said every household in the Batsarin-Alhaji area had to pay N500 to the bandits from the last farming season.
Thereafter, the bandits demanded that the villagers supply them with fertilisers.
The villagers had to tax themselves to purchase the fertilisers.
According to a 65-year-old farmer, Sa’adu Nuhu Batsari said he stopped tilling three of his farms of 20 hectares each for over two years due to insecurity, lamenting that the heightened banditry is driving both big and subsistence farmers out of farming.
“Once you’re on the farm these people would come and abduct, kill or harass you. I abandoned my farms that are deep inside the bush and now work on the one close to town that is only two hectares. The constant threat stopped me from going to the farm,” he said.
The Chairman of Batsari Local Development Association, Sani Muslim Batsari, also lamented that he has been forced to stop cultivating his big farms in the bush in the last two years due to the worsening insecurity situation in Batsari.
