President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Monday urged state governors to provide grazing land for pastoralists.
Tinubu said the provision of grazing land for herders would end the violent clashes between farmers and herders and the loss of lives and farm produce.
He also asked the governors to pay wage awards to workers to relieve the substantial population of hunger and hardship.
The president spoke at the flag-off of the agricultural mechanisation revolution for food security and commissioning of the remodelled domestic terminal of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Airport in Minna, Niger State.
He said, “You must care for our people, and re-orientate our farming population including the livestock programme. I don’t see why Nigeria cannot feed all the pupils in our schools with one pint of milk daily if our dairy system is well harnessed.
“I know what it means as an economic sabotage for roaming cows to eat up the crops and vegetation of our lands; it could be painful but when we re-orientate the herders and make provision for cattle rearing, the problems will be solved.
“The governors should provide the lands and I, as the president, am committed to giving you a comprehensive programme that will solve this problem towards banishing hunger from the land.”
The president also said the student loan scheme, social security programme for the elderly and the vulnerable, and other interventions would commence soon as part of efforts by the federal government to relieve Nigerians of hunger.
President Tinubu said the federal government would partner with states to end hunger and hardship, adding that the state governments had the task to do the jobs and work the talks.
“We have seen the level of commitment here, from the state level. We have seen leadership. The success story of any leader will depend on their ability to do what they ought to do at the time it ought to be done,” he said.
Earlier, the Niger State governor, Mohammed Umaru Bago, said agriculture remains one of the key steps his administration has taken to address the challenges in critical sectors of the economy and engender prosperity for the people of the state and the country.
He said bandits would not have the power to control any part of the state with the state’s determination to ensure that all the ungoverned spaces are cultivated.
He said his administration had embarked on the rehabilitation and construction of major roads across the state to ease the movement of agricultural produce to markets.
Bago said the Minna airport, named after President Tinubu, had been in a comatose state for the past 13 years with a failed runway, dilapidated terminal building, absence of fire and safety equipment and runway lighting system.
He said the domestic terminal which had been under construction for over a decade had been abandoned by the previous administrations.
Bago thanked President Tinubu for approving the airport as a special agro-processing free zone.
He said the zone has 3,000 hectares of land where 1,000 hectares each is dedicated for greenhouses, dairy and meat processing as well as agro-processing storage.
He said as part of its contribution to food security, the state would explore over 3 million hectares of arable land, water bodies, 23 grazing reserves, and 94 forest reserves to improve the living conditions of people.
