Farmers in Difa Community, Yamaltu Deba Local Government Area of Gombe State, have relocated to their farms to keep watch due to increasing hippopotamus attacks on their crops.
Newsmen’s visits to farms in Difa on Tuesday, observed the presence of several makeshift houses built with guinea corn and sorghum stalks, which the farmers now use as shelters.
Mr. Hassan Abdulateef, a 40-year-old farmer, said he had been living on his farm since planting his crops three weeks ago. According to him, he loses between 10 and 15 bags of crops annually due to hippo attacks, which significantly reduces his income and affects food security efforts in the region.
“In 2024 alone, I spent over N600,000 to pay youths to guard my 7-hectare farmland and prevent hippos from grazing on my crops,” Abdulateef told NAN. “I usually harvest almost 80 bags of paddy yearly which gives me roughly N4 million annually.”
For Mr. Abu Ali, a 52-year-old rice farmer from the community, his story is a mixture of fear and courage. Ali told NAN that he had to put on a brave face to scare away the huge animal he feared so much, guarding his farm every night for the past 60 nights.
The farmers appealed for urgent intervention, stressing that their livelihoods were under threat due to the constant grazing of hippopotamuses on their crops.
Mr. Inuwa Ahmed, Director of Forestry and Wildlife Management at the Gombe State Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, confirmed receipt of over 20 complaints on the hippopotamuses’ attacks. Ahmed revealed that the government, through the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) Project, was working on establishing a hippopotamus sanctuary to protect the animals and their habitat while allowing farmers to cultivate their lands without conflict.
“We plan to plant grasses and other vegetation that hippos feed on, covering a 60-metre width along the riverbanks and extending 15 kilometres along the river within the sanctuary,” Ahmed said.