The Ekiti State Government has committed to proactive engagement with farmers and herders to prevent clashes, aiming to enhance food security in the state.
The Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, Ebenezer Boluwade, speaking on Thursday at a two-day training for the state Peace Committee for Farmers and Herders, state Project Implementation Unit and other stakeholders, said the state would do the right things to ensure crop farmers and herders co-existed peacefully.
The training on “Conflict, dialogue and resolution to promote social cohesion between crop farmers and livestock farmers,” was organised by the Ekiti State Coordinating Office of Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support Project, a World Bank project in Nigeria being implemented by the Federal Government and Ekiti State.
Stakeholders at the programme included traditional rulers, market men and women, crop farmers, livestock farmers under the aegis of Miyetti Allah, the leadership of the Fulani community, religious leaders and security agencies, comprising the Nigeria Army, Nigeria Police, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Department of State Service, Amotekun Corps, Ekiti Agro Rangers and Marshals, among others.
The state had recorded cases of destruction of farmlands by cattle and the attendant crop farmers and herders clashes in the past.
Boluwade said the state set up the peace committee primarily “to ensure peace in our localities. The aim is to ensure that we enjoy peace and tranquillity in our farmsteads. At the farmsteads, we have people rearing animals and people cultivating crops.
“In Nigeria, we have issues of herders and farmers clashes here and there. So, what we are trying to do in Ekiti is to be proactive and resolve it amicably, so that every sector will work on its own without impacting negatively on the other.
“If you are rearing your animals, rear them so that you would not become an endangered species or cause trouble within your community.
“The whole purpose is to promote food security. The training is about capacity building, getting exposure, sensitisation and also sending the message down to the real actors that things must be done in the right ways.
“You cannot leave your animals to go on the free range and destroy people’s farms. Those things are not welcome in the new Ekiti State that we are.”
He applauded Governor Biodun Oyebanji for the various efforts undertaken by the present administration to promote food security in the state.
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Olugbenga Odesanmi, lauded successive governments in Ekiti State, particularly the Oyebanji administration, for the various intervention projects in the livestock value chain.
Odesanmi said livestock farmers in the state should replicate the Promasidor Farms, Ikun Ekiti model, whereby hundreds of cattle are reared in a modern way and managed under hygienic conditions with no reported cases of herds of cattle grazing crop farms.
The Ekiti State Chairman of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Mr Adebola Alagbada, said the farmers-herders clash had a large share of blame for the present high prices of food items in the country.
“This programme is coming at the right time because we need to step down the inflation rate in the country.
“For the state government to deem it fit to bring the herders and farmers together is a beautiful arrangement. We have been trying to stem this crisis, but what we are lacking which this government is ready to do now is to make laws. With this effort, we think a beautiful result will come out of it,” the AFAN chairman said.
The Chairman, Miyetti Allah in Ekiti State, Mohammed Nasamu, said, “The goal of both groups, as business people, is to prosper and not to suffer losses.
“The peace committees at the local government and state levels comprising farmers, herders and security agencies will stop the migrant cattle rearers always responsible for the crises in the state.
“Oyebanji has done well by meeting farmers and herders and bringing us together to know one another as human beings engaging in business.