Adamawa tasks monarchs to avert herder-farmer clashes

• SWOFON links food insecurity to gender-based violence
The Adamawa State government has directed traditional rulers to take active steps in curtailing the perennial clashes between herders and farmers in their domains.

It asked the chiefs and emirs to constantly call meetings between herders and farmers around them with the intent of preventing clashes between them.

Governor Ahmadu Fintiri gave the directive during a state Security Council meeting at Government House, Yola.

According to the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Awwal Tukur, who briefed newsmen after the meeting, the parley focused mainly on issues of farmer-herder clashes, adding that as part of measures to sustainably address the problem, the government had resolved to increase investment in agriculture and reestablish grazing reserves.

He said the meeting identified the need for increased training conferences with traditional rulers and their subjects to stop influx of trans-border herders into the state.

The SSG added that the governor further directed that security meetings be replicated at the local government level to craft community-specific solutions.

IN a related development, the Smallholder Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria (SWOFON) in the Federal Capital Territory has attributed the food insecurity in the country to the rising spate of gender-based violence.

It lamented that domestic violence against women both at the home front and on the farms had worsened the economic crunch.

The FCT Chairperson of the association, Mrs Comfort Sunday, who raised the concern during a stakeholders’ consultative meeting and press briefing, decried the invasion and destruction of maize in her two and a half hectares of land by cows.

She said many of her members also relived similar incidents, warning that such occurrences promote hunger in the land.

Sunday claimed: “The herdsmen come into our farms because they know we cannot defend ourselves, unlike the men folk that can easily defend themselves.”

Secretary of SWOFON, Nnana Mercy, stated that several women farmers experience physical violence, sexual harassment, and emotional abuse, often within their homes, communities, or workplaces, which lead to diminished mental health, reduced productivity, and even abandonment of farming.