Kwara governor seeks solution to crisis

Worried by the continued loss of lives and property in the protracted clashes between farmers and herdsmen across the country,
Kwara State governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed has urged Nigerians to sit together and come up with an acceptable solution.

The governor, who spoke in Ilorin, said that the interests of both the farmers and the herdsmen must be taken into consideration in the search for a solution.

He said, “I think we need to sit down and truly look at what is going to work for us as a country.

We must first recognise that the cattle herders are Nigerians whose interests have not been truly looked into in the light of the services that they render to the national economy.

“We require a very responsive agricultural policy which must be comprehensively pursued and must carry everybody along to ensure that nobody is left out.”

The governor said Nigerians should consider the practices elsewhere with a view to adopt  that which would suit the nation’s interest and peculiarities.

He said, “But one thing is clear, the way and manner we used to do it in the past is not going to work again because the space is getting smaller, the population is growing and we require optimal land use in such a way and manner that we will begin to get the right benefit.

“So much land but with very small output because we have not improved on the way and manner that we are going to create inputs and expect outputs.”

He called for a holistic review of the present system in order to see optimal land use to generate maximum wealth and also create space for cattle herders in such a way that herders would see the benefit of improving over and above the present system.

According to him, “Everybody knows that the movement of cows from one location to the other is very tiresome and most importantly, does not give us the kind of benefit that we are supposed to get from the cattle. By the time they move from Point A to Point B, they are almost emaciated.

“It requires that we create a more enabling environment in advocacy in terms of other benefits of not moving around. These are things that government must put in place; then we begin to create laws that would guide utilisation.”