A farmer based in Lagos, named Ezenwa Ikenna, is currently nursing the injuries he sustained at the hands of some hoodlums suspected to be land grabbers as they stormed his poultry located in Festac last Sunday.
According to Vanguard, some machete-wielding assailants stormed Ikenna’s poultry at 6th Avenue, injured him, and smashed the glasses in his farmhouse.
It was said that some of the birds in the poultry have been killed in the attack . Also sustaining an injury to the head and some of his workers sustaining various degrees of injuries.
Despite the attack carried out on him and his farm, however, Ikenna, claimed that the hoodlums called policemen who arrested and handcuffed him despite that the said officer saw his injury and the destruction on his farm.
His offense, according to the policemen, was that he released his dogs to protect him against the hoodlums while carrying out the attack.
To avoid such an unpleasant situation, he had earlier given out money and drinks to some leaders of the suspected land grabbers in the area before he started the expansion work on his farm.
His uncle was said to have gotten the land from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) for him, but because he was not ready to start working on the land, the land grabbers started showing interest in the land.
He decided to start large-scale farming last year with various kinds of animals on the land while securing the services of guards to watch over the land and the poultry as well after fencing the entire property.
He did not move into the property until he had accommodation issues at his previous place and was advised to erect an apartment on the land to properly monitor the property himself.
Knowing how things worked, he paid some money and pleaded with the land grabbers in the area, and did not witness any disturbance for over a year. After a while, he started receiving threats from another faction of the land grabbers that his animals would be killed and his house and other structures in the compound be burnt down.
He said one of the guys came into his compound and asked him to come outside, and he refused because he didn’t know him. Before he could call the police, a large number of them barged into his compound, broke his glass, and dragged him out of his house and he couldn’t escape as they were a lot of them, almost numbering 50.
Despite seeing the destruction done to his apartment, the policeman they called arrested him and placed a handcuff on him, saying he was arrested because he released his dog on the land grabbers.