A farmer identified as Bashiru Aliu (50) has said that he narrowly escaped with his life after some armed men suspected to be herdsmen attacked him with machetes inside his farm on Tuesday morning.
Aliu, who is currently receiving medical treatment in an undisclosed hospital in Auchi, in a telephone conversation said the incident happened at Ubuneke-Ivbiaro, in Owan East local government area of Edo state between 9.00 and 10.00hours on Tuesday.
The wounded man said the armed herdsmen looking famished emerged from the bush nearby and attacked him at his plantain farm, with their weapons like they were going to kill a common animal.
He said. “When I was cutting the matured plantain in my farm, I did not know that these people had laid an ambush somewhere waiting for me and suddenly they pounced on me and started using machetes on me, saying that they are here to take my life.
“At that point, knowing that it is between life and death, I engaged them in a serious fight and in the process, they inflicted cuts on my head. When they assumed that I was dead, they ran away. That was how God saved me from their hands”, he said.
Meanwhile, police sources say that the matter has been reported to the Divisional Police Headquarters, Afuze, the administrative headquarters of the council.
Reacting to the incident, the oldest man in Ivbiaro community, Chief Musa Kadiri, called on security agencies to come to their aid noting that farming activities in the locality has been at its lowest ebb following the armed men’s attacks.
Kadiri said on May 6, one of the armed men raped a married woman and killed her husband in the process, an incident which he said now prevents the people of the community from going to their farms.
He also called on the local and state governments to do everything possible to stem the tide of incessant herdsmen’s attacks on farmers in the locality in particular and Owan East local government and the entire state in general.
