Abdulmumini Baƙo, a 40-year-old fisherman in Dadin Kowa village in Gombe State, had his leg fractured after an encounter with a hippopotamus in Dadin Kowa River, not far from Dadin Kowa Dam.
Dadin Kowa community, located in Yamaltu-Deba local government of the state houses the Dadin Kowa Hydroelectric Dam that supplies about 40 megawatts of hydropower to Nigeria.
Bako told WikkiTimes that earlier in October, he set out on a Sunday night as usual for his fishing in River Dadin Kowa only to be confronted with the gigantic aquatic animal. “I was attacked by a Hippopotamus which led to a fracture on my right leg,” he said.
According to him, the presence of a Hippo is not new, but his recent encounter was problematic.
“They are everywhere in the river. But we take precaution before setting our boats to avoid them by rowing in a different direction from them. But that particular night, they were unnaturally quiet, so I assumed they were just deeper in the waters.
“Suddenly, I sighted the head of a Hippo and in a blink of an eye it dismantled my boat into two and grabbed my leg. I struggled for a while before I was able to open its mouth. It then got distracted by a part of my boat that sailed away and so I swam to the riverbank, screaming for help,” he narrated to WikkiTimes in an interview in the riverine community.
Bako sustained bites and a fracture from the predator which led having multiple stitches in three different parts of his leg after the fracture was treated.
He contended that the aquatic animal poses a serious threat to their age-old means of livelihood.
“The Hippos are a threat to our survival. We have been into fishing for more than a decade and that is the only trade we depend on. The government has turned deaf ears to our struggles,” he explained.
Like Bako, many other Fishermen in Dadin Kowa have voiced similar concern over the recurrent threats to their means of sustenance from large animals beneath their water.
WikkiTimes learnt that Gombe State Government has prohibited hunting or harming the hippopotamus. The fishers however argue “but how else can we defend ourselves?
Bello Musa, a 30-year-old fisherman whose active participation in fishing spans over a decade, noted that some days all fishers in the community have to surrender their business of catching fish due to the presence of the Hippos that hinder them from accessing the river, which in turn, affects their survival in the current economic downturn.
“There are more than 30 Hippos around,” he said, referring to the river. “It is just by the grace of God that we come out alive from the water every day. I have two wives and 14 children and there are days when I have to give up fishing because the Hippos are floating and it is dangerous to go inside,” he added.
Chairman of the Fishermen Association in the community, Umar Alhaji said their members suffer a lot from the animals living in their river.
He called for government’s intervention to move the Hippos to a different habitat so as to have free access to the river for their fishing business.
“We have endured them for a long time and many people have suffered injuries because of them. Let the government do something about it,” he pleaded.
WikkiTimes efforts speak with the Gombe State Commissioner of Agriculture, Dr Barnabas M Malle, proves unsuccessful as he neither responded calls nor replied to a WhatsApp message sent to his phone number.
