Thursday, June 2, 2016

Nigeria Land Disputes Fuel Surge in Herdsmen Violence


Reuters, 02/06 15:42 CET

By Eromo Egbejule

BENUE, Nigeria (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – When Sarah Adaji’s husband retired as a teacher two years ago, he kept himself busy tending to their farm, hoping to provide food for his family and make some money off the produce.

Three months ago, Adaji returned to their home in Nigeria’s middle belt region to learn that armed herdsmen had stabbed her husband and dragged him through the fields until he died.

“The cattle herders came and wiped out my joy,” the 44-year-old widow told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, recalling how her husband had relished working on the farm after his retirement.

“They wanted to kill every man in my village, and in the area,” she said at Ocholonya village in Nigeria’s Benue state.

Hundreds of people like Adaji’s husband are killed each year in violent clashes over land use between semi-nomadic, cattle-herding Fulani people and more settled farming communities. 

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Source: euronews.

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