A former governor of Lagos State and national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has spoken his mind on the lingering farmers-herders crisis that is currently tearing the foundations of the country apart, by calling on Nigerians and the Federal Government to “move in unison but decisively to end the spiral of death and destruction” the issue has led the nation into.
Tinubu, in a lengthy electronic writeup he personally signed and released on Saturday, acknowledged that the crisis has “cost too many innocent lives while destroying the property and livelihoods of many others”, and that it “has also aggravated ethnic sentiment and political tension.”
The former Lagos State governor also said that though a security solution to the crisis is essential, yet he believed that such alone could not completely abate the crisis.
Tinubu’s statement read in part, “although enhanced security may be the necessary first step, but it cannot be the only step. Nor do we resolve this by hitching ourselves to emotional, one-dimensional answers. More to the point, those who cast this as exclusively a matter of ethnic confrontation are mistaken.
“This is no time for reckless chauvinism of any kind, on either side of this dispute. This matter is not ethnic in factual origin or actual causation although in the minds and hearts of too many it has become ethnic in recrimination and impulsive action.”
Tinubu also attempted to help resolve the herders problem saying to “leave the farmer unattended is unfair and will only trigger a resentment that tracks already heated ethnic fault lines. The times have also been perilous for the hardscrabble farmer. He needs help to survive and to be more productive in ways that increases national food security.”
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While attempting to provide solutions to the farmers-herders issue, Tinubu believed that both needed a form of compensation for losses they had incurred during the crisis.
He also recommended that the Federal Government should convene a meeting of state governors, senior security officials, herder and farmer representatives, along with traditional rulers and religious leaders, the purpose of which would be to hammer out a set of working principles to resolve the crisis. He also recommended that similar meeting should be replicated at state level for effective workable solution of the crisis at the grassroots level.
Read full statement in www.thexpressng.com
