Special Report (Investigative Journalism): How A 67-Year-Old Multimillion Naira Farmer Turns Into A ‘Mai Kuskus’ Water Vendor Due To Boko Haram Insurgency
By Tabitha Ishaya
14th September, 2022
Baga town is a market and agricultural town in northern part of Borno State, Nigeria. The town lies on the shores of the famous Lake Chad, this gave Baga the chances of becoming a reputable spot for fishing, fish smoking, farming and international agri-produce market.
A successful farmer was he before the devastations of Boko Haram insurgency. Sixty-seven-year old Mallam Isa Ibrahim hailed from Wudil town, headquarters of Wudil Local Government Area of Kano State.
Mallam Isa Ibrahim is a family man; he is married with two wives and has been blessed with seven children, four males and three females.
As an ambitious small-scale irrigation farmer who majored in onion and maize (corn) cultivation, had always wanted to expand his small agribusiness, Mallam Isa Ibrahim migrated in the 1990s in search of greener pastures from his hometown of Wudil to Baga town, which is located on the shores of Lake Chad in Borno State, northeast of Nigeria.
Luckily for him, Mallam Isa secured about five hectares of land and began cultivating his favourite crops – onion and maize. Initially, however, he began with the cultivation of onion only and then, later on, he decided to incorporate maize.
As fortune smiled on him, Mallam Isa Ibrahim got bumper harvests where he reaped more than 100 bags of onions and almost 100 bags of maize. This fortune occurred like a routine annually.
After hiring irrigation pumping machines for a number years, Mallam Isa was able to generate enough money from his lucrative agribusiness to buy two irrigation pumping machines at the rate of N27,000 each. In addition, to ease transportation to and from the farm, Mallam Isa bought two motorbikes at the cost of N115,000.
As years passed by, Mallam Isa Ibrahim became very successful in his agribusiness and bought a land where he built a house in which he and his family moved in to live.
Narrating his story, the Mallam Isa says, “I have never seen or heard about a commercial town in the northeast of this country where tax is being generated on a daily basis and in huge amounts of money as is being done here in Baga.” Mallam Isa went on to say that “We pay tax on every single agricultural produce as well as on all fish produces.” Mallam Isa added that apart from catering for the needs of his family, he also helped many other needy people irrespective of who they were and where they came from. As he puts it, “I derive pleasure in wiping off tears from other people’s eyes.”
Despite the spate of Boko Haram attacks in Borno, especially in the Baga region, his harvests used grow annually, generating huge incomes for him and employment opportunities for many others.
Mallam Isa Ibrahim explained that as Boko Haram attacks worsened, the risks of getting killed or maimed heightened while going to the farm increased. Because, according to him, “You could get killed if you come across Boko Haram fighters on the farm.”
Mallam Isa narrated that whenever he went out to the farm, he would often come across dead bodies of slaughtered persons whom he knew very well. “At first, fear took over me”, he says, “But gradually, I became used to those sights.”
As he continued sharing his ordeals, Mallam Isa Ibrahim said that the first day that Boko Haram launched an attack in which 42 persons were killed was one of the horrible days he would never forget in his life. According to him, on that day he saw large numbers of dead bodies drenched in blood spread everywhere. “Not only that”, he says, “In fact, I was among those who picked the bodies and prepared them for mass burial” he added.
Mallam Isa went further to say that as the Boko Haram attacks heightened, there as a time he contemplated leaving Baga town off together with all his families despite the fact that he had not quite long ago planted onions newly.
However, as a Muslim who believes in the will of Allah and destiny, Mallam Isa Ibrahim summoned up all his courage and decided to remain back there and continue with his farming business, knowing fully that Allah is the one who protects everyone from harm always.
Whilst I and my families decided to stay back, “it hadn’t been any smoother sail at all”, he lamented. “We run out to the bush for safety whenever there is an attack; and I can’t count how many times such incidents occurred” he added. According to him, they became helpless and hopeless and only trust in Allah was what miraculously saved them from being killed or maimed by the terrorists.
Furthermore, Mallam Isa Ibrahim disclosed that one of his cousins was also a victim of Boko Haram’s attacks, saying that “Boko Haram met him together with his son on his farm and slaughtered them like ram.”
According to him, “In fact, life in Baga became so risky, stressful and full of uncertainties to the extent that we have to be in charge of the security of our community by staying guard at night, positioning ourselves in strategic corners of the town in other to save our lives and those of our families given that there were no any security men around.”
Mallam Isa further said that with the Boko Haram terror increasing coupled with the lack of the military men around to protect them, more and more people got killed, including the village head (Lawani) of Baga town. “They [Boko Haram] would usually come around to tax us individually amounting to millions of Naira while others would get taxed in hundreds of thousands of Naira; and failure to do so, is a death penalty” he says.
As days, weeks and months passed by, “Fear began to take the whole of me, and the safety of my family became my number one priority”, Mallam Isa narrated. “But how to take them out of Baga town is a big problem, because if Boko Haram fighters discovered that someone is planning to escape, ‘rest in peace’ would be his/her name”, Mallam Isa further explained.
However, according to the farmer-turned water vendor, despite the Boko Haram attacks, some commercial activities were still going on sketchily. People would usually came from Maiduguri to buy agricultural produce and fish.
“This became a golden opportunity for me to leave”, Mallam Isa says, “But with the size of my household at that time, which consisted of 13 lives: that is, my two wives, seven children and three grandchildren, including myself, this could certainly not be possible to leave at once.”
As he continued to narrate about the possibilities of escape from Baga town, Mallam Isa Ibrahim says, “It’s very critical for one to be cunny and wise while making moves to seize this golden opportunity to escape otherwise, one wrong step forward could land one in a big trouble. If the Boko Haram discovered that one is planning to escape clandestinely, he/she might get killed”. However, according to him, Boko Haram fighters do allowed people to travel out but without carrying any luggage.
According to Mallam Isa, that was how he began to send his families leaving, batch by batch in the pretext of travelling to Maiduguri for shopping, and from there, they would just find their way off back to home, some of them to Wudil and others to Potiskum as planned.
Mallam Isa Ibrahim lamented that, “There was no mobile communication network that one could even put a call to any of my fleeing family members to know about their safety. I was left all alone with my eldest son who had got married to a lady from Matile, a town close to Baga.”
Mallam Isa Ibrahim, the agribusiness tycoon who would in no time turn into a water vendor due to circumstances beyond human capabilities continued his farming business and, as mentioned earlier, he usually got bountiful harvests annually. Although he started up his small agribusiness with little capital, he usually got bumper harvests of more than 100 bags each of onion and maize and in return, after selling my farm produces “I get more than two million naira”, according to him.
The increase in Boko Haram attacks left him with no choice than to escape clandestinely. But Boko Haram’s condition that no one travelling out must carry any luggage with him/her forced to Mallam Isa Ibrahim to leave Baga town and abandon his huge investment worth millions of Naira in order to escape from the devastation of the then increasing Boko Haram attacks and repression.
Mallam Isa further narrated that, “Even though the onions were almost ready for harvest and the maize was flourishing, with tears of grieve and anguish in my heart, I looked back at the farm and reassuringly said “Allah ya sa hakan shi ya fi alkhairi (meaning may Allah make it such a way that this fate of mine would be favourable to me). Then I left; and that was in 2013”, he added.
Surrendering his ordeals to the will of Allah, Mallam Isa narrates that “Life begins for fresh in Potiskum town of Yobe State with my second wife, who is Bolewa by tribe and my three children [from her]; while my first wife and my four children [from her] are currently living in Wudil, my hometown.”
Afterwards, life has become so challenging; and how to cope with the new reality has been the greatest challenge for Mallam Isa – both his two wives have had to stay in their parents’ homes, catering for them – this is one aspect of the new reality he faces now. “But how do I start and where should go to? After all, I have abandoned everything I owned in Baga” Malam Isa complained.
Mallam Isa further explained that in the past, he and others were provided with allocation tickets for collecting food aid, or palliatives in Potiskum Local Government Secretariat. He said that he collected such palliatives for two years only, but since then until the time of this report, he could not get any help.
Mallam Isa boldly says, “Unlike some people in my shoes who beg for survival, I decided to look for something doing in other to meet the needs of my families.” He also says, “I am not the lazy type. I do some brisk artisan work. In fact, sometimes, I would even be called upon to split piles of firewood [faskare] into smaller pieces and sometimes I go and work on other people’s farms and I get paid. But that is not so often; and that can’t sustain my sizeable family.”
While narrating how he turned into a water vendor, Mallam Isa Ibrahim says, “One day, a cart-pusher water vendor [mai kuskus] told me that he would be traveling out and asked me if I could use his cart before he would come back; and I replied, ‘yes, I can’; and then I collected the cart from him.”
Mallam Isa said that he started off his new water vending occupation with five 20-litre plastic jerry cans in a cart with the capacity of 12 jerry cans since he was not used to pushing a cart. He then, later on, added three more jerry cans, thus making them eight; and finally, he completed them into 12 jerry cans.
According to Mallam Isa, after a while, the man that borrowed him the water-selling cart (kuskus) came back from his journey and got back his cart from Mallam Isa. However, a determined Mallam Isa asked the kind-hearted man if he could help him get one cart for him to start water vending on his own; and luckily, the man agreed and got one for him to use on a hire basis.
Since then, Mallam Isa Ibrahim accepted his new fate sincerely by focusing on his new venture of water vending. According to him, this year 2022 is his seventh year of venturing into this business of selling water in kuskus. But ever since he began, hardly does he make one thousand Naira a day. That is means, he make less than N350,000 in a year compared to when he was earning more than 2 million Naira in a year during the time he lived as a farmer in Baga.
“Honestly”, according to Mallam Isa Ibrahim, the once agribusiness tycoon who has now turned into a water seller, “As someone who once handled and managed investment worth millions of Naira, I don’t find it easy to cope with the new realities.” He once again reassuringly surrendered to the will of Allah, saying “I believe that Allah is over everything and I have no other option than to accept it in good faith as a test to my faith in Allah.”
Mallam Isa Ibrahim said that if he could have the means to go back and continue farming, he will not hesitate to do so. According to him, the means for him to go back to farming include the capital (jari), the farmland (gona), the farm tools (kayan noma) and a shelter (muhalli/gida). However, according to Mallam Isa, he will prefer a change of environment, preferably Ngalda town in Fika Local Government Area or Gashua in Bade Local Government Area, both in Yobe State.
He said that despite all this, he does not allow the trauma to weigh him down. He said that he could still give something to the needy from the little he has like he used to do so when he was rich in Bags town.
Mallam Isa Ibrahim concludes that “I’m grateful to Allah for the condition in which I have found myself; I know someday, the story will change again insha-Allah.”
However, it remains to be seen when and how the story changes, and who will Allah use to change Mallam Isa’s story.
The Collaborative Media Engagement supported by Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), is aimed to strengthen media independence and presence, especially at the sub-national levels, state, local government and the private sector, in a bid to improve public awareness and the ecosystem for transparency, accountability and good governance.
