The minister of agriculture and rural development at the weekend said that Nigerian farmers and herdsmen have no reason to fight over land, as the country boasts of about 45 million hectares of empty land.
Ogbeh made the assertion while addressing a press conference ahead of a summit to be held Tuesday in Abuja to seek ways of finding lasting solutions to the lingering herdsmen/farmers conflict, which has claimed many lives properties over the years.
The whole idea of this conference, the minister said, is for the whole Nigerian family to find a solution to this problem, which can be solved and which no one else can solve for the country.
Those invited to attend the conference include state governors, experts, ministries, consultants, the World Bank, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), among others.
According to the minister, “a country which has at least 45 million hectares of empty land has no business allowing cattle rearers and farmers to fight, there should be enough space to accommodate all without conflict, then and only then can all of us be happy,” he said.
The main issued to be deliberated upon include the frequent and recurring farmers/pastoralists conflicts, cattle banditry, resulting in wanton loss of lives and property and the destruction of our national health.
Equally disturbing, Ogbeh said, is the inability to tap into the abundant potentials in this sector, which is why the sector has not been able to give Nigeria all that it can get out of it in terms of supplying animal protein, mainly beef, milk and all other products which are harvested from livestock, as other nations do.
“We hope that when we are done with all these problems, we can export the solution to the whole of West Africa, our neighbours, they too are facing the same kind of problems, there are conflicts in Ghana, in Togo, in Cote d’Ivoire, in the Republic of Benin, between herdsmen and farmers, it is not unique to Nigeria,” he stated.
He said in line with the federal government’s desire to diversify the economy through agriculture and other sectors of the economy and address some of the institutional constraints in the agricultural sector, the Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP), known as The Green Alternative, was launched sometime last year.
The minister assured that APP is an agric business economic model capable of delivering sustained prosperity by meeting domestic food security, generating exports, supporting sustainable income and job creation.
The livestock component of this policy focuses on all aspects, especially beef, poultry and dairy during the period of 2016 to 2020.
Ogbeh lamented that the livestock subsector is however bedeviled by many constraints, which include among others the low productivity of our agric stocks, the conflict between nomadic and pastoral and trans-human elements due to lack of feeds and further insecurity.
Other constraints are income and human losses due to pests and diseases, low incomes due to limited access to markets and finance, and lack of quality and standards, as well as very poor infrastructure.
According to Ogbeh, Nigeria is clearly taking a bold step in breaking away from rearing livestock through traditional practices, using modern methods, involving the private sector, in animal production, animal health, animal care delivery, as well as meat processing and marketing.
Through this, the best interests of pastoralists, investors, development partners and smallholder producers along the livestock value chain are to be increasingly incorporated.
