…We’re stranded — victims lament, call for urgent government intervention

A SERIOUS storm is brewing in Kano State following a face-off between farmers and senior government officials over the alleged seizure of government-owned land, which the poor farmers had been using in the past to cultivate farm produce for their survival.

Rice farmers, in particular, are raising the alarm that their means of livelihood has been hijacked by well-placed senior government officials, thereby impoverishing them and worsening their plight.

According to them, their rice farmland has been seized by senior officials of the administration, who have close contacts with the Kano State Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources. In Kano, farmers are allotted land for farming under the state land tenure system in a bid to grow more food for subsistence and commercial purposes. But this practice is being hijacked by powerful and influential government officials who see the system as an easy means of grabbing land for their commercial farming and money-making ventures at the expense of the average farmer.

The farmers complained that the farms which they get on a tenure system from the ministry and on which they have relied for several years for survival, have now been dubiously seized and shared to senior government officials without any substitute given to them.

Some of the farmers, who spoke to AV, complained that with the seizure of the government land from them, they would have no farm to work on during the approaching wet season farming.

Most of the farm lands are situated in Bukure, Bebeji and Garunmalam local government areas. One of the affected farmers, Yusha’u Muhammad, explained that their livelihood which is farming had been taken away, throwing them into more misery and penury.

Muhammad said: “These farms are all we rely on for survival, but we have now lost them to those officials and we now have nothing to depend on. This is very unfortunate and sad because it can throw us off balance and send others into antisocial activities. “I want to call on Governor Abdullahi Ganduje to please look into our plight because it is very serious. We plead with the governor to look into the seized plots of land and cause them to be returned to us,” the young farmer pleaded. Another farmer, now thrown into hardship by the land grab, Hussain Shuaibu, lamented that it might be too late for the government to intervene since the land taken away from them had since been allocated to senior government officials.

“This time around we the farmers are helpless and hopeless because the farmlands we rely on for survival have been allocated to government officials behind our back. We now see them flaunting their big cars and wealth around the farms we were working on before they were taken away from us. This is painful and disheartening,” he stated.

But no official of the state Ministry of Agriculture was willing to talk to AV when our correspondent went there to confirm the land grab.

The Permanent Secretary is also said to be on a trip to Kenya and cannot be reached. The Commissioner also could not be reached, while the deputy governor has since resigned and is presently busy in the political activities in the state.