The Federal Government has urged stakeholders to search for a lasting solution to farmer-herder clashes in the country.
The Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Abubakar, said this at the opening session of the Regional Summit on Human and Climate Security Challenges and Farmer-Hearder Conflict Resolution in the Livestock Sector.
The minister said the summit could be used as a platform to discuss the way forward for both farmers and cattle herders to coexist.
According to the minister, the crisis has assumed dangerous dimensions lately and it calls “for deep introspection into determining the causes of the heightened and incessant attacks and seeking more innovative ways of addressing it”.
Abubakar blamed the surge in the crisis on the complex interactions between the changing nature of the availability and access to natural resources in the region as a result of climate change.
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In his words, “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.
