Farmers give government a one-week ultimatum to drive herdsmen away from their lands
Farmers in Maame Krobo, Kwahu Afram Plains South District, Eastern Region, have given the government a week to remove Fulani herdsmen from their land.
Farmlands belonging to the unhappy farmers have been encroached on by the herdsmen’s animals. The Farmers in Maame Krobo have expressed their dissatisfaction with the nomadic herdsmen’s continual damage of their farmland.
They disclosed that they[farmers] would like them[Fulani herdsmen] to leave because they can’t coexist any longer. “It’s been 10 years of constant destruction to our farmlands. My ten acres of maize farm is gone. We can’t contain them anymore.”
Similarly, the women in the community have also complained about the constant sexual abuse by the nomadic farmers.
“They meet us on the way to the farm holding guns and other weapons, and they want to have sex with us. The abuse can no longer be endured. Our farms are our livelihood.”
The nomadic herdsmen, according to a committee member at the fodder banks, resort to destroying people’s fields to feed their cattle rather than paying the fodder bank management to have their livestock graze.
“The fodder bank at Wawase can contain enough cattle but these Fulani nomadic farmers do not want to pay for the services there,” he said, “They just want to perpetuate pain to the farmers here.”
The fodder banks were set up by the government to help nomadic farmers in the Kwahu Afram Plains feed their livestock and end the violence between indigenous farmers and nomadic herders.
Chief of Kwahu Abetifi Nana Agyeman Asiedu backed the farmers and requested that the government heed to his people’s cries.
“Government should quickly intervene before the issue gets out of hand. My people are suffering.”
Source: Richard Mensah Adonu | Join our Telegram Group
