Professor Ibrahim Garba, Vice Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, has advised the Federal Government to create grazing reserves nationwide for cattle rearers.
Garba told NAN on Thursday in Lagos that creating grazing reserves would help to end the clashes between farmers and cattle rearers across the country.
The vice chancellor said that the incessant clashes between farmers and cattle rearers were the result of the failure to maintain grazing routes across the country.
“In the past, our earlier governments demarcated certain routes as cattle routes across Nigeria from South to North, from North to South in many areas.
“So every year when they come, they follow those routes. But over time, farmers have taken over all these routes.
“Some have already become farmlands, and it is like water; water would always find its way, if you block it, it would flood.
“So when you block when they don’t have any way, you cannot singly control a thousand cattle, they have to eat.
“Things have changed now, we should not be promoting these cross-border routes.
“What government should do is, they should create grazing lands so that the Fulanis live where their natural environments are.
“If, for example, a Fulani man starts from Sokoto State and ends up in Enugu State, he comes into a completely different environment.
“Why don’t you go and create reserves, conserve them using irrigation, where they can farm, they can graze the animals so they don’t have to move?
“It is to encourage states and local governments and then the Federal Government would come in with the huge financial support.
“So that they can now do a census of where do you have concentration of cattle rearers.
“Even if it means government buying lands from farmers and create those lands as grazing areas and build schools and hospitals.
“Also, create markets for them, for the farmers and also the Fulani people around the area.
“They would not go anywhere, they don’t have to travel far.’’
According to him, state ministries of agriculture, district heads and other traditional rulers, can assist the Federal Government with useful information that will help eliminate the insecurity created by trans-state grazing.
-NAN
