By Emma Una
Calabar—Angry traders at the Akim Timber Market in Calabar, Cross Rivers State, yesterday, attacked members of the anti-deforestation task force of the state, leaving two soldiers and five timber dealers with injuries.
The face-off occurred when the task force team raided the market to impound wood.
A team of soldiers, led by the Chairman of the State Anti- Deforestation Task Force, Air Vice Marshall Eko Osim, during the raid, were confronted by angry traders with broken woods and bottles, which led to one of the soldiers sustaining a deep cut on his head and the other a cut on his nostril.
He said: “Logging of wood is banned in the state and there is a law to that effect, but the timber dealers daily aid illegal loggers to bring in fresh wood through hidden paths in ungodly hours of the day into the market.”
He said the timber merchants, who are supposed to work in collaboration with the task force to enforce the ban on illegal logging of wood in the state, are actively colluding with the illegal loggers to destroy the state’s reserved forests.
“The market has not been shut, what we are doing is to track fresh wood brought in, even as we also track them to the jungle and the forests, where they carry out the illegal logging activities and the wood which escape our dragnet is confiscated here in the market.”
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Vía Vanguard News http://ift.tt/2k0PK8D
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