Anambra: Fear, panic as cattle rearers, cattle invade new airport

From Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha

A group of Fulani herdsmen and their herd of cattle reportedly invaded the newly built and commissioned Anambra State international cargo and passenger airport, causing fear and panic in the area.

The cattle rearers are said to have gained entry from the Umueri route to the airport, destroying farms close to the airport.

The development has brought immense fear and panic among farmworkers close to the airport.

One of the farmworkers, Ezinne Nwede, who works with Offor farms, sharing a border with the airport, said that they were gripped with fear when the cattle rearers climbed the wire fence of the farm into the place to scare the workers. terrorise them.

A horticulturist, Mr Udochukwu Uzor, a young man from Anambra, contracted to plant palm trees at a farm near the airport, said he was so terrified at sighting the ‘dreaded cattle rearers’ that he was reluctant to do the job.

He said that about two months ago, the cattle rearers gained entry into the farm workers’ house at the nearby Offor farms to steal foodstuff from one of the rooms occupied by one Blessing, another farmworker.

When contacted the owner of the farm, who incidentally heads FS Initiative, a UK international development organisation that promotes farming in Africa and Asia, Mr Ikenna Offor, expressed very deep concern about the development.

He urged the state government to rise up to the occasion, stressing that he thought the divisive issue of open cattle grazing had been finally addressed recently by South East governors.

‘It is situations like these that give birth to certain anomalies that we sometimes experience in the country,’ he said. ‘So we need to nip this pending crisis in the bud before it rears its ugly head in a wrong direction,’ Offor warned.

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