File: Cameroonian soldiers patrol on November 12, 2014 in Amchide, northern Cameroon, 1 km from Nigeria. The city was raided by Islamists from Nigeria’s Boko Haram, killing eight cameroonian soldiers and leading the population to flee on October 15, 2014, before another six coordinated attacks that killed at least three civilians in the remote north of the country, on November 9, 2014. Boko Haram’s five-year insurgency in neighboring Nigeria has left thousands dead, and the Islamists have occasionally carried out attacks over the border. Cameroon has deployed more than 1,000 soldiers in the extreme northeast of the country to counter the Islamist threat. AFP PHOTO
By Emma Una
Calabar— SOLDIERFS drafted from 13 Brigade of the Nigerian Army in Calabar, Cross River State, have raided the Calabar timber market and carted away illegal wood brought into the market through illegal routes by timber merchants.
The soldiers, who went into the market in four vans, were led by the Chairman of Cross River State Anti- Deforestation Task Force, Air Vice Marshall Eko Osim, who told Vanguard that the market was raided to enforce the state policy on zero logging of wood in the state.
“Logging of wood is banned in the state and there is a law to that effect but some timber dealers aid illegal loggers to bring in fresh wood through hidden routes in ungodly hours of the night.”
He said that the timber merchants were supposed to work in collaboration with the anti-deforestation task force to enforce the ban on logging of wood in the state but they were colluding with the illegal loggers to destroy the forests which are being specially conserved to provide biodiversity.
“The market has not been shut down, what we are doing is part of the work and we do follow them to the jungle and the forests where they do the logging and if they escape our dragnet we confiscate the illegal ones here in the markets,” he said.
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