Threatened by herdsmen… Agyaragu has become once upon a big yam market

FOR many decades, yam farming in Nasarawa State has been a thriving and lucrative trade for farmers who specialise in. Many of such farmers had become prominent individuals in their communities and had established themselves a force to reckon with in yam farming.

However, that seems to be a long time ago because in the last couple of years, things have drastically changed for the worse as many farmers and traders in the crop are now worried that there is an obvious case of low patronage starring them in the face on a daily basis.

Nasarawa State with a land mass 27,118 square kilometres useable for agricultural purposes has more than 80 per cent of a work force population that is predominantly farmers and traders who give premium to the trade in yam especially in the rural areas and local markets across the state.

Agyaragu town is a major producer of yam and its market is one of the largest in the state where buying and selling of yam is predominant, attracting traders from across the 36 states of the nation including neighbouring countries.

Arewa Live visited the yam market and spoke with a couple of farmers and traders who narrated their experiences, especially the change in their fortune, according to some of them.

Danladi Alago is both a farmer and trader in the yam business. He told Arewa Live that he inherited the business from his late father, who was also a notable farmer and trader.

“I have been buying and selling yam tubers in Agyaragu market for over 35years now. In fact, I started as a young boy working with my father, buying and selling yam.

“The business has been good to me. I got married, built houses and sponsored my children in schools through this business. I am grateful to God for what I am today; I am happy and contended with what I’m making out of it,” he stated.

Revealing how big his yam business is, Alago explained further that he harvests over two thousands yam tubers annually, making huge of profit any time he stored it for some months and then sell at a later date.

“I make lots of gain in the business whenever the patronage is high and the price has appreciated. Sometimes ‘market’ could be bad, but we are grateful to God in this venture. You know, in every business there must be some challenges, and the most common disturbing issues are low patronage. Imagine taking yam to the market and failing to sell due to the price or lack commercial value.

“Secondly, getting fertiliser during the planting season is a major problem and this affects yam production in this place. The fertiliser provided by government always ends up in the hands of middle men who in turn sell to poor farmers at a high price that they could not afford,” Alago explained.

According to him, one of the biggest problems facing the farmers is the herdsmen who invade the farms and destroy their crops. Farmers, he stated, no longer feel safe while on their farms as the herdsmen often threaten to kill them in the event of face-off.

“The worst of it all is the way herdsmen are invading our farms and destroying all the crops. And if you attempt to talk to them they threaten to kill you.

“They are scaring us from farming. If your farm is little far away like three kilometres, have it at the back of your mind that the farm no longer belongs to you anymore because the herdsmen will definitely encroach on it and eat it all.”

Expatiating on the threat by the herdsmen, Alago told Arewa Live that the invaders often herdsmen go about with cutlasses, sticks, and guns, harassing farmers without any provocation. He expressed their helplessness over the situation that has led to many killings in many states.

But unlike Alago, Khalid Ibrahim, who has also spent some years in buying and selling of yams business in the market, is longer finding things easy.  He expressed concerns about the way things have changed from what used to be when farmers were making a lot of money from what they know how to do best.

“Patronage has drastically dropped if you know this market very well,” he said. “If not because of the farmers/herders crisis in Nigeria as a whole, everybody would have been coming to Agyaragu market to buy yam. But because of this problem, lots of traders in yam now prefer going elsewhere to buy their yam,» he stated.

Chairman Yam zone of Agyaragu market, Mallam Zaidu Ali, while speaking with Arewa Live confirmed the challenges facing farmers. He listed lack or inadequate fertiliser as one of the problems.

“As the Sarkin noma of this area, ever since we have been faming in this community, we have never had fertiliser in this place. The only thing they (government) do is to give it out to marketers to sell it to us the farmers.

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“A lot of people come to me to complain about government fertiliser supply to the people; we were asked to compile names several times but the end results still remained the same. The farmers will always buy the product in the market as usual at high price.

“On the issue of farmers and herders, we can only be patient with them; when you successfully plant your crops and it is getting close to the time for harvest, half of what you produced would be eaten by the cattle.

“Before now we were not experiencing such things in this place. We have left the bush for the herdsmen to graze their cattle; people are afraid of being attacked so they no longer go to distant place to farm,” he explained, calling on government to intervene urgently and come to the aid of the farmers.

Alago and Ibrahim like other fatrmers who spoke with Arewa Live, called on government to come to the aid of the farmers quickly to save their business but more importantly their lives.

“You either leave them to eat up your plants or be killed. We want government to help us talk to them to allow us farm this year peacefully,” stated Ibrahim.

According to Alago, the situation is becoming unbearable and only government intervention can help the matter.

“We are calling on government to help us tackle the crisis between farmers/herdsmen problem in the state so that the situation could normalise, an atmosphere where farmers will cultivate their crops without any fear of having their farm invaded,» he stated, pleading that government should sensitise herdsmen to the need to rear their cattle without encroaching into farms and thus avoid conflicts, while also calling on farmers to learn to be patient and not take the law into their own hands by reporting any encroachment on their farms to the police.

Agyaragu is not alone in the problem of farmers/herders’ clashes. Tackling the problem which is nationwide needs well-coordinated efforts from the federal government and it is only when the situation begins to turn out positively in other parts of the country that Agyaragu can also begin to heave a sigh of relief.