Dry season farming threatened as ‘unknown’ rodents invade farmlands in Kano

The emergence of mysterious rodents destroying plantations across Kura, Garun Malam, Bunkure and other irrigation sites in some local government areas in Kano State, has begun to generate serious concern as the pests pose a threat to this year’s dry season farming activities.

According to a farmer in Yadakwari village of Bebeji local government, Malam Ahmadu Nura, the rodents look strange as they are bigger than normal rodents.

He added that the mystery attached to the rodents is their resistance to Rodenticide, also known as rat poison. He explained that the rodents have inflicted huge damage on his wheat plantation, adding that various tomato plantations and those of maize have been seriously affected by the pests.

“We have never seen such a species of rodent that resists rodenticides, the only way we adopted to control them is by setting rat traps, but honestly they have done serious damage to a lot of plantations around here.

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We have done all that we can at our own level and indicators have been showing that if something urgently is not done, then a lot of farmers would be doomed this dry season,” he said.

It was also gathered that even when killed and fed to dogs, the dogs refused to eat the dead rodents.

 “Even our dogs refuse to eat the dead rodents, and that has proved to us that there is more to these rodents than meets the eye,” said one of the affected farmers.

Another affected farmer, Malam Ubale Alasan Danlasan, said the rodents are so intelligent that not all measures adopted in trapping them worked.

“They behave and act like humans, sometimes even smarter than humans. They usually operate at night and rest during the day time, hardly would you see them during the day. Moreover, they possess the ability to dodge rodenticides and other forms of rat poison administered against them. I have never seen such a rodent in my entire four decades of existence,” he said.

When contacted on the incident, Kano State Chairman of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Alhaji Abulrasheed Magaji Rimin Gado, confirmed the emergence of the mysterious rodents.

He added that the state chapter of the association had received a formal complaint about the rodents and that the association had already embarked on a sensitization move to educate farmers on the best way to manage the rodent attack.

He further revealed that the association had also conveyed a formal complaint to the state Ministry of Agriculture to arrest the situation before it got out of hand.