By Sah Terence Animbom
Following the burning spree reportedly carried out by armed men in uniform in Nwa sub division on March 5, 2019, that saw the burning of over 400 houses in the entire sub division, over 25,000 inhabitants of the sub division are currently faced with severe hunger and starvation.
Burning of houses in the ongoing Anglophone crisis by both military and armed civilians has been the greatest cause of the rising hunger that is currently witnessed in the North West region.
This is even more compounded by the fact that food stuff and farm inputs worth FCFA 3.400.000 were destroyed in the warehouse of MEFEH Boarder Cooperative Society, the leading agric Cooperative in Nwa situated at Jan quarter on March 5, 2019.
The items burnt in the Cooperative warehouse belonged to a group of 179 farmers involved in the cultivation of food crops both for commercialization and consumption.
This cooperative that has been operating since 2013 and authorized just two years ago precisely in December 2017 has been the breadbasket and agric hub of Nwa sub division. They have been providing agric assistance to members, ranging from the donation of fertilizers, farm tools and even capacity building for the purpose of increasing yield.
The burning of food stuffs in houses in Nwa coupled with the burning of the MEFEH cooperative warehouse which at the time of burning had in stock, 197 bags of corn weighing 100 kilograms each, 5 bags of beans, 400 liters of palm oil, 97 bags of fertilizers, 12 sprayers, including vital documents of the cooperative like their registration certificates and others have been described by inhabitants of the area as totally inhumane.
One of the members of the cooperative, an old woman of about 70 says her life has been rendered hopeless, as even the little corn she stored in her barn at home was burnt and the bag of corn she had reserved at the cooperative ware house for commercialization too has been burnt. She lamented her loss, cursing the perpetrators of the act which she termed wicked.
The inhabitants have been again compelled to a hand-to-mouth lifestyle, depending mostly on food freshly harvested from the farms. Those who could not bear the tensions and hunger have escaped to Nigeria while others have fled to the West Region.
Transportation to the locality too has been disabled and people who are compelled to travel there for some important reasons like funerals are obliged to go through Magba which is the last sub division in the West Region sharing boundary with Adamawa region.
Traveling to Nwa recently has been described as a nightmare by Mr. Barnabas who is the president of MEFEH Boarder Cooperative society: “All our lives investment has been burnt in our houses and in our warehouse. That is where we used to make money to feed our families. Right now as I speak to you, there is nothing left. I left my house with nothing. The clothes you see me wearing are clothes I got from Bamenda after we escaped from Nwa. I can tell you that our people in Nwa will be hungry for a long time because they have nothing left. The worst is even that there is no road to go there now and when you go there you spend more than 20,000 FCFA only on transportation. It is virtually a nightmare.” He told The SUN.