Herdsmen Crisis Caused By Water Scarcity — Tinubu

The national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has said that the cause of the ongoing crisis between herdsmen and farmers in various community across Nigeria is caused by water scarcity.

Tinubu said this while speaking on Monday, October 8, at an event organised by The Nation and TV Continental, which was themed: ‘Towards an Enduring Peace.’

The APC national leader also urged the Nigerian government to immediately convert unused land to grazing routes as this will curb incessant clashes between farmers and herdsmen.

“The government must help herders gradually shift from their traditional nomadic existence to a more static lifestyle. We have to face the reality that modernity is making the nomadic way counterproductive and inefficient,” Tinubu who was represented by an executive commissioner of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Sunday Dare said.

“Unoccupied, isolated land can quickly be turned into grazing areas in the affected states. In the long run, this will enable herders to better maintain their livestock and thus their own livelihood.

An acutely thirsty man remembers neither Bible nor Quran very well until his thirst is quenched. Dire need often pushes a man to behave as if bereft of compassion for a person in equally dire circumstance.

“No doubt the problem has exacerbated during the past decade. We must assume climate change plays a role,” he added.

He also recommended that water catchment and conservation systems such as the prudent use of dams and irrigation sub-systems maintainable at the local level must be developed to end the crisis.

Abdullahi Babayo, the director-general of nomadic affairs agency in the state, made this known in a statement issued, in Minna, on Wednesday, October 18.

Babayo said the aim of the meeting was to reconcile communities that were affected by farmers/herdsmen crisis in the area.