Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has blamed the herdsmen/farmers conflict on the scarcity of resources for grazing.
According to the minister, as a result, it is important for farmers and herders to adopt ranching and technology. He stated this during the 2018 World Congress of the International Press Institute (IPI) in Abuja, the nation’s capital on Thursday.
He said, “this is an issue of resources getting more and more scarce. There is less water, there is less grass. The farmers would not have the kind of land they used to have before so they have to adopt the best practises in Agriculture and modern technology.
On the part of the herders, they must also adopt modern technology such as ranching. These issues are also cultural, as the economic and cultural. You need to persuade the average herdsmen to go to a ranch.”
The minister believes that cattle who are confined to ranches are even more productive than those that migrate. But not many herders think that way.
“For a simple reason, in his (a herdsman) own words,‘it is not so much about how fat your cow is but how many they are. A man with 100 herds of cattle is superior in his own mind with a person with 50.
“But it has been proven that a cow on a ranch produces about 10 litres of milk a day while migrating cattle produces about a litre a day.”
