I am not a Bororo neither am I a Fulani. I am a Yoruba man from Tanke family in Ilorin, Kwara State.
The incident happened between 5pm and 6pm on Monday ( March 29, 2021). I was not around that day.
I came back and I went to the mosque to pray; it was my son who took the animals to graze that called my attention and said the cows ate poison. Later, another child of mine came and told me that over 20 cows were dead already.
On getting to the scene, I met 52 cows lifeless. That night, policemen came; some people also came over to sympathise with me. As we left the scene, some unknown persons went to steal some of the dead cows.
It got to a point that some people were fighting with the sanitation officers of the local government that came to inspect the scene and some people took a cow. I had pleaded with the government officials that I wanted to sell the dead cows, but they stopped me.
We have done our own findings and we discovered that the cows did not die mysteriously; they died of poisoning; we discovered that they were poisoned by some unknown persons.
We don’t suspect anybody, but we know that some people perpetrated the act and I am sure that our colleagues that sell cows cannot be responsible.
If it had happened in the forest, I might suspect that some farmers were responsible, but the cows ate and drank water nearby – in fact, it was around Bunmi Harmony Nursery and Primary School (in Akungba), which indicates that my sons grazed the cows within our settlement.
Our cows have not destroyed the crops of any farmer because we don’t even have farms in the vicinity here where they graze.
I have a peaceful relationship with the people of the community. I could recall that my brother was accosted a few years ago by someone who came with a poisonous chemical threatening to kill our cows, but we resolved the issue amicably and since then I have not had any encounter with anybody around. We have been living cordially.
Culled From The Punch
