Farmers/Herders Crisis: President Tinubu Ready to Provide Lasting Solutions

Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is ready to provide lasting solutions to the Farmers and Herders crisis especially pertaining to the economy of the livestock and the security of Farmers and Herders.

The Chairman, Presidential Committee on Herders/Farmers Clashes and Chairman of the All Progressive, Abdullahi Ganduje gave this assurance after presenting a report detailing their recommendations to the President.

The Committee also recommended the creation of a ministry of livestock, to be separate from that of Agriculture saying this would end the incessant acrimony between farmers and herders, including paving future reforms for the livestock industry.

He disclosed that the committee studies previous attempts, failures and other success reports on resolving the Farmers/Herders crisis before coming up with recent recommendations presented to the President.

“It is easy to declare war but it is difficult to end it meaning that we have made several important recommendations because we studied previous attempts, the failures and the successes. We put them together and made recommendations to the President.”

The Chairman also said that the committee recommended sources of funding to include international organisations, the government and the private sector.

Read Also: Nigerian President Establishes Committee To Resolve Herders/ Farmers Clashes

Addressing State House Correspondents on the re-occurring clashes between farmers and herders, Prof Guta Yahya, Chairman technical committee of the committee from the University of Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria, said that as long as the triggers to the crisis are not addressed, the country is likely to be having the re-occurring crisis of the two groups.

According to him, “As long as the triggers of the conflicts are not addressed, we are likely going to be facing the challenges. Typical livestock herdsmen is always in search of food and water for animals and you are aware most of the cattle routes have been taken over by urbanisation, encroachment and as a sort of development even the grazing reserves has been taken over so where do you expect them to go to but other areas and in the courses of movement they are going to likely go into conflict.

“Cattle have the censors to smell water 10kilometre away so if you block the routes that are used, the cattle will insist on destroying that route to the location,” Prof Yahya explained.

He emphasized that the panacea to the existing acrimony between Herdsmen and farmers is to transition from migration tendencies to ranching which a support system can address.

Another member of the committee, a livestock specialist Rabe Isah Mani, said to make herders permanently settle in a ranch, adequate knowledge and technology are required.

He identified the challenge of land grabbing confronting the herders saying that the people who own the lands do not have animals while the ones with the animals do not have the lands.

He pointed out that the traditional herders presently have limited knowledge to engage in modernising the system of ranching. “They are not educated enough to modernize their system.

“This is what we are trying to do, to break the jinx and engage all the functionalities into modernised ranching hence this impedes the attempts to move into the mechanise productive economic system.

“The competition for land economically is high, we can see how infrastructural development has taken over a lot of natural grazing land that the animals had access to, as it is, the roads, hospitals and expansion of towns have all contributed to the pressure.

“There had been settlements such as Isheyin in Oyo state and other rural communities, there are fulanis who have settled in these areas and they don’t own the lands but there is a symbiotic relationship between them and the community.

 “This symbiosis is been broken by tribal, religious and economic factors, if you ask the herders to go to grazing reserves, the reserves have been there but these grasses we see on the roadside cannot hold the livestock we must improve the pasture.”

Rabe added that to improve the pasture for the livestock, Nigeria needs to invest in the sector.

He further expressed optimism that the government of President Tinubu will address the developmental challenges and will provide leadership for the private sector to invest in the livestock industry.

“The component of the education is extremely important and we are hoping that the new generation of livestock owners will be enlightened enough and will have the strength to take bank loans, buy the land and produce the productive animals,” Rabe added.