Lai Mohammed, minister of
information, says the clashes between farmers and herdsmen date back to 1948.
The minister said this on
Thursday when he received a delegation of permanent secretaries led by Winfred
Oyo-Ita, head of the service of the federation.
Mohammed said though the
misunderstanding is as a result of “an environmental situation”, politicians are
trying to make gains out of it.
“The farmers-herders clash is
neither religious or ethnic, I think politicians and other people who don’t
understand it are trying to make it look like Christian-Muslim, north-south. It
is simply an environmental situation and we must see it in that light,”
Mohammed said.
“The farmland that belongs to one
person will have to be shared by three of four persons. Today, Lake Chad has
shrunk to 2,500 kilometers before then (1963) Lake Chad used to support 35
million lives from Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria – they were farming,
fishing and doing irrigation on the same water. When that water lost 90 percent
of its surface people had to move south.
“This is the whole issue of the
farmers, herdsmen clashes, it is not Christian or Muslim. It has nothing to do
with religion, it has nothing to do with ethnicity. The earlier we realise that
the better. The first herdsmen, farmers clash was in 1948, it didn’t start
yesterday, so please let us change this narrative.
“Frankly speaking we cannot
repair the damage that has been done in over 16 years in three years.”
While listing achievements of the
Buhari administration in various sectors of the economy, the minster said the
country exited recession because of the growth of the agriculture and mining
sectors.
He said the government had
already diversified the country’s economy.
“We have diversified the economy,
we went out of recession not because of the increase in the price of crude but
because of agriculture and mining, these are things you need to share regularly
if not they will accuse you because you are the government,” Mohammed said.
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