General
Source: The Moment
HUNDREDS of women on Monday morning blocked a major highway along Zaria/Kaduna road, to protest against their forced eviction by the Nigeria Air Force (NAF) from their ancestral home at a village behind Barakallahu, near Rigachikun, a satellite town in Kaduna.
The women were challenging the NAF who had already mobilised workers to the site to build perimeter fence around the occupied community's residents farmlands and graveyards.
The women were carrying placards with inscriptions in Hausa such as, ' Bamu da gida sai Titi' (meaning, our only shelter left is the highway).
The women were also protesting the physical assault on one of them by soldiers who were drafted to control the women.
An incident that nearly broke to a security situation between the youths, the husbands of the women who were standing by and the security men drafted to the area.
The incident which increased the anxiety in the town, led to the complete blockage of the exit and entrance of traffic to Kaduna town for over three hours.
It, however, took the combined efforts of the police, the military, government officials and community leaders to calm the nerves of the protesting women who had insisted on remaining on the highway as the only shelter left for them to occupy.
Narrating their grievances, the leader of the women, Mrs. Monica Musa who spoke to newsmen said, several years back the Air Force had evicted them from Ungwan Waziri, a village were the graves of their great grand parents lay, without any compensation.
'We had to move to this present location in 1984. They followed us again in 2008, and destroyed our houses and farmlands.
' As you can see, most of us are widows, our husbands have died and left us with so much family responsibilities, just for us to wake up today and see the Air Force again starting work to build a perimeter fence around our properties that included our burial grounds and farmlands.
Governor Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, represented by the Commissioner of Land and Survey, Mr. Aminu Sani and the Emir of Zazzau, Dr. Shehu Idris who was also represented by the Hakimin Rigachikun, Mr. Mustapha Bello among other stakeholders were all at the site of the disputed land to control the situation.