Agriculture has been described as a sector with a vast potential to attaining national sovereignty in food and nutrition security, if the challenges limiting it can be effectively mitigated.
The Special Adviser to the President, and Coordinator, Livestock Reforms, Professor Attahiru Jega, stated this while delivering a lecture titled “Exploring the Potentials of Livestock Exports in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects”, at a public lecture and awards organised by blueprint newspaper in Abuja.
Professor Jega stressed that the livestock sector occupies a uniquely strategic position within the broader agricultural economy of Nigeria, constituting the rural livelihoods, nutritional security, inter-regional trade dynamics and an estimated 7 to 9 percent of GDP while also providing direct and indirect livelihoods to over 20 million Nigerians.
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He however highlighted some of the challenges limiting the sector including the persistent scourge of violent farmer-herder conflicts, primarily driven by competition over increasingly scarce natural resources, exacerbated by climate change and poor land governance mechanisms.
“This violence in turn, feeds into broader issues of national insecurity, displacement and diminished social cohesion—making reform not only an economic necessity but a peace-building imperative”
“Besides, studies have shown that demographic shifts and evolving dietary preferences are set to place unprecedented pressure on Nigeria’s livestock systems in the coming decades. Projections indicate that by 2050, Nigeria’s population will reach nearly 400 million, positioning it as the third most populous nation globally”.
Professor Jega recommends a deliberate, anticipatory planning and long-term investments in livestock systems, to avoid facing risks of acute protein deficits, heightened food insecurity and intensified pressure on already fragile rural livelihoods.
“The alternative is an avoidable crisis in which growing populations, shrinking arable land and deteriorating ecosystems combine to worsen both rural poverty and national food dependence”
“Given this context, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Livestock Reforms Initiative, with the support and assistance of the Presidential Livestock Reforms Implementation Committee (PLRIC), represents a decisive policy shift, one that seeks to recalibrate Nigeria’s livestock economy into a modern, climate-smart, conflict-resilient and economically competitive industry. The whole effort, in summary, as President Tinubu said, is to turn “tragedy into opportunity” stated Professor Jega.
He said the most persistent and destabilizing challenge is the intensifying conflict between pastoralist communities and sedentary crop farmers, a dynamic that has escalated from seasonal disputes into a protracted national security emergency.
According to professor Jega, at the root of these tensions lies a competition for finite and degrading natural resources, particularly pasturelands, water points and transhumance corridors.
“Compounding this crisis is the accelerating impact of climate change, which manifests in prolonged dry spells, shrinking water tables and desertification—forcing herders to migrate southward into farming communities in search of viable grazing lands”.
“The breakdown of traditional mechanisms of negotiation, such as mutual grazing rights and seasonal migration protocols, has been exacerbated by state failure to institutionalize modern conflict mediation systems, thereby allowing local disputes to metastasize into inter-communal violence, displacement and militarized confrontations. These conflicts not only undermine food production but also strain national unity, widen ethnic fault lines and drain public resources through repeated emergency interventions” stated Professor Jega.
Also speaking at the event, the Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation, Engineer Joseph Utsev appreciated the management of Blueprint newspapers for organising the event
He assured that the Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation will continue to make life meaningful,in recognition of the fact that water is life.