A 17-member Conflict Prevention and Resolution Committee has been inaugurated by Governor, Alhaji Usman Ahmed Ododo to ensure peaceful coexistence between farmers and herders in the state.
Inaugurating the committee in Lokoja on Thursday at an event organized by the Kogi Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support Project, Kogi L-PRES, Governor Ododo charged them to check, regulate, and monitor the movement of herdsmen and their livestock along the stock routes to prevent farmer-herder clashes.
The committee’s function, Governor Ododo said is to also ensure that farmers do not encroach on any existing tract leading to a stream, river, spell, or watercourse to water livestock.
“This committee is the nucleus that will enlighten and communicate with the farmers as well as the herders. Mind you, we are going to have a launch of the National Animal Traceability and Identification very soon, sponsored by the Federal Government in Kogi State.
“This is just a step in the process of peacebuilding. The committee should be alive to their duties and know their functions as spelt out by adopting a template that will reduce crises,” he stated.
Represented by Dr. Olufemi Bolarin, Kogi L-Pres State Project Coordinator, the governor, listed the terms of reference of the committee to include guiding the project on tracing and demarcating stock routes and grazing reserves, enlightening farmers and herders on the importance of each other to society and peaceful coexistence.
Others encourage disputing parties to resolve their differences amicably by facilitating settlements of disputes between farmers and herders, as well as determining compensation for any party who suffers losses.
The Governor also charged the committee to enlighten farmers on the need to evacuate farm produce within a period as well as to access compensation in respect of loss or damage to farm produce or livestock.
Earlier, the Kogi State Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, Timothy Ojomah, said solving conflict between farmers and herders is key to sustainable food security, describing the inauguration as timely as the state was investing heavily in the agriculture sector.
Ojomah, who is the chairman of the committee, charged other members to take their job seriously, stressing that a lot of confidence has been reposed in them.
“Parts of the mandate of the committee is identifying the grazing routes, areas that animals will take to drink water and the farmlands,” he said.
In his presentation titled “Dialogue in Pursuit of Peace between Farmers-Herders Communities,” Dr Olugbenro Olajuyigbe, Director of Emergency and Risk Alert, said the state must adopt a workable strategy to reduce farmers-herders clashes.
He recommended the adoption of anonymous mechanisms, hearing the perspectives of farmers, groups setting up local government platforms, and conflict diaries, among others, as ways of nipping conflict in the bud.
The Director stressed the need for the establishment of a national peace dialogue committee, to establish inclusive security architecture, and to strengthen the capacities of security agencies to be able to curtail conflicts arising from farmers and herders in the country.
Olajuyigbe enumerated historical, cultural, ecological, economic, political, vulnerability, weaponization, and radicalization to violent extremism as some reasons for farmer-herder conflicts in Nigeria
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