In a bid to ensure the wellbeing of the citizenry, no fewer than 500 personalities from across the country would meet in Abuja tomorrow to address the recurring challenge of famers/herders clashes in the country.

The chairman of the 30-member organising committee, Prof Attahiru Jega, disclosed this to reporters at a press conference, yesterday, in Abuja. Jega disclosed that the three-day parley, starting from tomorrow will end on Wednesday, adding that discussants would be drawn from a wide range of stakeholders, comprising traditional rulers, academia, researchers, producers of livestock value chain, civil societies organisations, and development partners from across the country.

The former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), expressed optimism that the outcome of the deliberations would serve as a blueprint to address the farmers’/herders crisis in the polity.

He noted: “It is very important that we find permanent solutions in terms of mitigating those conflicts, and indeed, having sustainable ways of not only developing the livestock sector, but actually preventing, if not totally eliminate such conflicts.

“We have chosen the best of the best of resource persons to make presentations during the conference. Some of them are professors, some of them entrepreneurs, some of them are corporate persons associated with livestock business, some of them are researchers, some of them associations of either key producers or participants in the livestock value chain.

“Without sounding immodest, I think we can say this is perhaps the best or one of the best groupings of arrays of stakeholders in an inclusive process in order to address a national problem.

“And there is no doubt that given the competence and calibre and the capacity of the people we are putting for this conference, the deliberations are going to be very rich and therefore impactful in terms of producing a blueprint to address this problem on a sustainable basis.” (The Guardian)

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