THE Federal Government has called on stakeholders to come together to find a lasting solution to farmer-herder clashes across the country.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Abubakar, made the cal at the opening session of the Regional Summit on Human and Climate Security Challenges and Farmer-Herder Conflict Resolution in the Livestock Sector.
Abubakar noted that the summit provided a critical platform for dialogue on the way forward to achieving peaceful coexistence between crop farmers and pastoralists.
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He said the farmer-herder crisis has assumed dangerous dimensions lately, a development which he said calls “for deep introspection into determining the causes of the heightened and incessant attacks and seeking more innovative ways of addressing it”.
The minister attributed the surge in the age-long conflict to the complex interactions between the changing nature of the availability and access to natural resources (land and water) in the region as a result of the effects of climate change.
According to him, “the Northeastern region is witnessing the negative impact of the depletion of water in the Lake Chad on the livelihood of over 45 million people living in the Basin, including crop farmers, particularly livestock farmers, and other people living around the lake as they depend on it for their economic well being and sustenance”.
“Our desire as a nation is for the restoration of the lake in the sub-region to its former glory by recharging it and also preventing further shrinkage. This is evident in our various appeals to the international communities, development partners, and other allies of Nigeria and Africa for assistance,” he said.
He, therefore, tasked the summit to brainstorm, discuss and compare notes as national and regional stakeholders in the livestock industry and climate security sector and arrive at the common objective of promoting peace and security.