At least 15 villagers have been killed and several others were injured after an attack on rice farmers on their farmland by suspected Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Borno on Sunday evening. The state is the centre of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency.
It was learnt that the insurgents raided the rice farms, arrested the farmers while they were working and slaughtered them. This happened in Karkut and Koshebe villages of Mafa Local Government Area (LGA) of the state. According to sources, the Civilian Joint Task Force intervened and recovered 13 dead bodies from the farmlands while they continued the search for the other missing framers.
This is coming, sources say, after the same LGA lost more than a dozen farmers from the village of Zabarmari who were attacked on Sunday evening while working on their rice fields.
Senior security sources said the terrorists came on motorcycles and divided into three groups to the villages before launching the attacks on the rural farmers. They added that the terrorists cleverly did not attract any attention as they did not use gunshots. They used cutlasses and knives to attack their victims.
“Nine bodies were recovered as of Yesterday (Sunday) night, while the search for others who fled the attacks are still ongoing,” a source revealed.
The spokesman, 7 Division, Nigerian Army Maimalari Cantonment Maiduguri, Lt. Zingina, confirmed the attack to newsmen on telephone but said there were no details about the attack yet before the military as of Monday morning.
Nigeria is still battling an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives since it started in 2009. Apart from the insurgency, the country’s military is confronting several other security challenges that have sprung up in different parts of the country, including a major threat by bandits across the north-west and an agitations for self-rule in the south-east that has been seized by violent gangs carrying out random killings.
The country’s president, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, has promised to address the challenges. However, security analysts say any significant changes have not been felt by Nigerians so far.
