Boko Haram insurgents kill 2 farm workers in Borno

Two tractor drivers were killed by Boko
Haram insurgents in Jere Local Government Area of Borno, Alhaji
Muhammad Dilli, the state Commissioner of Agriculture, said.
Dilli told newsmen in Maiduguri that the insurgents attacked the
tractor operators while working on a farm “in the past few days’’.
He listed the slain tractor operators as Kashim Bukar and Shettima Mustapha.
The commissioner said that the upsurge in the Boko Haram insurgents
was a major challenge facing the agriculture sector in the state.

Dilli added that thousands of farmers had returned to the farms in the
liberated areas, in spite of the insurgents’ attacks.
However, he said, most of them could not go to the farms for fear of the insurgents’
attacks.
“The state government had procured farm inputs and modern agricultural
equipment but it could not distribute them to farmers due to the insurgency,’’ he said.
The commissioner also disclosed that the state government had spent over N40
billion on agriculture development programmes in the past six years.
He said that government had adopted proactive measures to
re-engineer and transform agriculture from the debilitating
effects of the Boko Haram insurgency.
He also said that the state government had procured 15,
000 tones of assorted fertilisers, 1, 000 tractors and 25 combined
harvesters.