Stray animals storm, destroy farms in Buea

It is common these days in the town of Buea and beyond to find goats or pigs straying into farms and eating the crops. In spite of the fact that passers-by or the farmers themselves chase them away, these animals do not stop coming back to eat the crop.

The destruction of crops, which cultivation the farmers invested huge sums of money and physical labour, has left them angry and confused. The Post gathered that these farmers are bitter and threatening to kill or catch and sell any animal they find eating or destroying their crops.

Josophine Bih, a farmer and a producer of corn beer, popularly known as ‘Mami Sha’, questioned why individuals will keep domestic animals that they cannot cater for but allow them to become a public nuisance. She remarked the issue is the prime cause of enmity between neighbours.

“We are at the heart of the planting season and we have been waiting for this opportunity to plant crops like maize, potatoes, plantain, beans, groundnuts and vegetables, having braved the very heavy rains. Sometimes pigs destroy the ridges we have built as they are always digging, not to talk of the goats which eat up maize, plantain leaves, potatoes and many others.

If it were during the dry season, we could rub their droppings on the plantain leaves, which makes the animals not to eat them, but now this can’t work because the rains will wash off everything. Why should I labour only for an animal to come and destroy? Can’t the owners of these animals build fences and keep and feed them; rather than inflicting pain on others?” Bih lamented.

An inhabitant of the Bakweri-Town neighbourhoud in Buea, Jaspa Ngwa, possibly a rearer, told this Reporter that when goats reproduce they can’t be restricted from moving about because they have to source for food and so, people should not expect that those very tender kids and piglets should be tethered too.

Ngwa further claimed that the straying animals are usually let loose by owners because it is rainy season, hence, they can’t be tethered because the heavy rains might kill them. He added that it is but necessary for goats and pigs to stray because, just like human beings, they need variety of food for a healthy living and that God did not make a mistake when he created them.

Confronted with the issue, the Quarter Head for Quarter II, Great Soppo Chiefdom, Samuel Nganda Tonga, said he has been receiving such cases almost every week, but that he and his collaborators are fighting hard to curb it.

“Locally, if cases of this nature are reported, we ask defaulters to pay a fine according to the degree of destruction caused by the animal.

At least we can measure input, but we have instructed that any pig caught destroying crops should be killed, brought to us and it will be split into two halves; one for the owner and the other for the victim. For goats, they are brought to us alive and if within 24 hours the owner does not pay for the destruction, we hand the case over to the Buea Council,” Nganda stated.

The Quarter Head emphasised that they don’t welcome any justification for a loose animal and so, individuals should endeavour to rear their animals in a hoard to avoid having problems. He added that even fowls could be tied with very long ropes.

“Nonetheless, I can recall my late grandfather, Pa Elias Elangwe, in one of his stories, telling us that a goat can always be remembered for its ability to regurgitate or chew-the-cud for very long hours and that’s why it can’t resist food.