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Abim residents starve as cattle rustlers wreak havoc
Ms Lotyang Napwon Lopwoni in her compound in Nakwalet Village, Longaroe Sub-county in Kotido District on Monday. She said she had spent three days without food. PHOTO/TOBBIAS JOLLY OWINY
What you need to know:
- After nearly emptying kraals of cattle, the raiders are now reportedly raiding homes for food stuffs.
Before his homestead was raided by armed cattle rustlers in Abilonyero Village, Atunga Sub-county in Abim District three years ago, 60-year-old Michael Otto’s one-acre compound contained three granaries and a kraal with about 40 head of cattle.
The raiders, according to Mr Otto, raided the village, which is guarded by a unit of armed UPDF soldiers numbering less than 15, and took the animals in one dark and rainy night.
“The same group also emptied and dismantled the three granaries that had a stock of sorghum, the size of 11 bags, ”he said.
When Daily Monitor visited Mr Otto on Monday evening, only two of the three grannies remained standing but empty.
Since the raid, we established that Mr Otto has been sharing the same hut with his wife, one of his four sons, together with his only bull and two goats.
“I am a farmer and I love animals but I fear the raiders and that is why I share a room with my bull here because I combine it with one of my neighbours to till our farmlands. Each of us lost all the animals previously to the raiders and we decided to buy each a bull and put together to do farming,” he explained.
“I have lived with this cow inside here for two years but I have now sharpened a set of two machetes to guard the bull while asleep,” he added.
According to Mr Otto, everything fell apart after the raid.
“We could not dig, we lost all the sources of livelihood and it took me time to raise resources to buy this single bull and add it to that of my neighbour to be able to plough our farmlands and plant crops when rains are back,” he said.
Displaced
Two-hundred metres from Mr Otto’s home is the home of Ms Christine Atyang, a single mother of two, who was displaced from her ancestral village at Olung in Magamaga Sub-county following sporadic raids by the rustlers who also burnt their homestead.
Ms Atyang said three years ago, she was forced to flee their village.
“There were no more animals and they would round you up in the farmlands and ask you to give them food items and if you fail to give them, they would beat you up. This forced us and others to flee the area,” she said.
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Because she does not have land in the area to do farming, Ms Atyang said they are forced to trek to Olung Village to do farming amid insecurity.
“We now have to go in groups of 10 to 15 women and men, you cannot farm alone, otherwise, you fall prey,” she said.
Just like Ms Atyang, Ms Rose Achen, an 80-year-old resident of Otalabar Village in Apok Parish, Atunga Sub-county, is faced with the huge challenge of raising food to feed her family every day.
But the recent resumption of the rainy season breathed hope into the life of Ms Achen since it aided the sprouting of various wild vegetables that they now harvest and boil for a meal.
Despite the proximity of Apok Parish (where Abilonyero Village is located) to a military unit of armed government soldiers and neighbours at a nearby Abim Town Council, the raiders have not spared the area according to Mr Emma Okech, the area chairperson.
“Cattle raids are now the biggest contributors of food insecurity here, the raiders even sneak in and attack to pick the bulls (oxen) that are used for ploughing, but these are poor communities who cannot afford the cost of tractor hire and their productivity is down,” Mr Okech said.
“Our people now sleep and share their houses (huts) with their livestock, it is not that the animals become safe but they are just too desperate,” he added.
Mr Okech said the soldiers have not helped much.
“The soldiers we have here are useless because even when you make alarms at 9pm, they will instead wait until 8am to come and seek understanding of what happened the previous night,” he said.
Neighbouring villages to Abilonyero such as Obul, Otalabar, Locken, Opedur, and Otalabar Central have over time been raided just like Magamaga and Abim Sub-counties and town councils of Abim and Alerek.
Mr Geoffrey Okech, the Abim District vice chairperson, in an interview, said only farmers- who are guarded by the UPDF soldiers can access the fertile and productive areas of the district to do farming.
Even though 75 percent of animals in the district have been lost to the armed rustlers, Mr Okech cited Magamaga and Alerek sub-counties in the district where raiders now condition locals to give them ready food or be killed and their houses burnt down.
“The animals are finished and the raiders now come to look for food and when you say there is no food, they burn your hut. Last month, two people were shot with bows and arrows for declining to provide food to the raiders in Alerek,” Mr Okech said.
“While wildlife comes in to destroy the few gardens of crops like in Magamaga and Alerek, the most victims are the women and children. Now, women have to budget for food for two categories, their families and the raiders to spare them once they come for food in the night,” he added.
This newspaper has learnt that last year alone, Abim District lost 30 people to hunger following acute malnutrition and food insecurity that has ravaged the Karamoja Sub-region.
Situation analysis
According to the district veterinary department, the population of bulls (oxen) in the district has significantly reduced due to raids following a 2020 livestock census.
“The livestock census in 2020 indicated that we have lost almost 70 percent due to raids yet these are the cows they use to farm,” Dr Oscar Okengo, the Abim District Veterinary Officer, said.
Mr Mathias Buteraba, the assistant district health officer, said the district ranks at 5.7 percent GAM (Global Acute Malnutrition ranking), above the recommended 5 per cent.
“Following the FSNA (Food Security and Nutrition Access) report of March 2022, five in every 10 children in the district are malnourished and one in five suffers from severe consequences of malnutrition and risks death,” Mr Buteraba said.
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On Monday, Members of Parliament under the Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security arrived in Abim and Kotido districts on the invitation of World Vision Uganda.
The visit is intended to inform the MPs of the status of the hunger and malnutrition crisis in Karamoja.
During the MPs’ meeting with Abim District leaders, Mr James Shilaku, the RDC, blamed the high prevalence of hunger in the district on insecurity.
“The soil in Abim is very fertile but the biggest problem is the insecurity brought by the raiders, rustling and theft because all oxen and even the ox-ploughs are taken away,” Mr Shilaku said.
“This sends a lot of fear in people not to go out in distances to farm for fear that they will raid the cows and the ox-ploughs,” he added.
The RDC said the government the porous borders are also frustrating the disarmament programme.
“We have a full package of disarmament operations, we want to disarm all armed groups that attack us in Abim district from the neighbouring districts but the borders are too porous that weapons are being worryingly traded along borders,” he added.
Interventions
Between the second week of June and first week of July, four schools in Greater Masaka area suffered violent strikes, which left property worth millions of shillings destroyed.
The In 2021, the World Vision started on programmes to tackle food insecurity and malnutrition in the sub-region. Of the six districts, Abim has benefitted from the organisation’s Global Hunger response, and Strengthening Resilience and Agro-Competitiveness projects, among others.
Under the Reducing Food Insecurity through Cash Assistance to the Drought Affected Communities project, cash transfers of Shs1.169 billion were disbursed to 5,000 vulnerable beneficiaries. While Abim had 900 beneficiaries, Napak had 750, Moroto 950, Kotido 1,050, and Kaabong 1,350.
Ms Hellen Akol, the World Vision disaster management manager, said they have been able to secure seeds of fast-maturing crops such as vegetables and beans to support 2,000 households in Awach Sub-county.
“In Awach and Abim sub-counties currently, we have programmes that target resilience and livelihoods, child protection and nutrition so that we are able to address the needs of the most vulnerable people in the community,” Ms Akol said.
She added: “We were able to secure funds under the Global Hunger Response and we have been able to conduct a nutrition assessment in Abim and Kotido districts and this information will be used to inform intervention gaps and needs within the district.”
In an interview, Ms Linda Auma, the vice chairperson Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security, explained that the visit is to enable them build strong evidence to support policy discussions in Parliament.
“We intend to table a motion on the hunger and malnutrition crisis in Karamoja as well as fast-track the development and passing of the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Bill that has been pending for years,” she said.
“The food insecurity in the region will only not require guns and the army, it will require collective efforts. We cannot have a free Uganda when we have not taken care of the mothers and children who are malnourished, retarded and stunted in development,” she added.
According to a Food Security and Nutrition Assessment (FSNA), the prevalence of global acute malnutrition among children in the nine Karamoja districts is at 13.1 percent with Moroto and Kaabong, being the most affected. The annual Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) shows at least 520,000 people in the sub-region are in need, 200,000 of these are under five years.
