A 70-year-old woman, Mrs. Alice Ogbonna was allegedly raped by a herdsman in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State. According to one Florence Okoro, who led a group of protesters from Mgbom in Isu community, Onicha Local Government area of the state, she said:

“The herdsmen have been raping us and our daughters and that is why we came to protest to the government to come to our rescue because we have had enough of these inhuman treatment from them. The government should help us because we are dying of hunger caused by these herdsmen who have destroyed our crops and other properties.”

“If we cook our food, they will come inside our house and take it and eat. We are farmers and we cannot do anything. The worst of it is that the horsemen rape us in front our husbands. Our culture forbids a woman from having sex with another man. If it happens, you cannot come out or talk in public again because you are a forbidden person.”

“These horsemen have defiled us and we are worth nothing in our culture. We are calling on our governor to tell the horsemen to leave us alone and they should pack out from our land.”

Also, Mrs. Veronica Chukwu, one of the protesters added that: “We don’t go to the farms again to avoid being raped and our farms have been destroyed. They are boasting that they are empowered by the government to move their cows around.”

“The main purpose we came out to protest today is because of the rape of one Mrs Alice Ogbonna, a 70-year-old woman to the point that she cannot walk again with her two legs. Apart from the rape, they beat her with stick on her two arms and she cannot move her body again.”