President Muhammadu has expressed the federal government’s intention to establish grazing areas for herdsmen, with a view to checking protracted clashes between farmers and herdsmen.
President Buhari also identified poverty, injustice and the lack of job opportunities as some of the causes of communal clashes in Nigeria.
Addressing a delegation of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue on Monday in Abuja, President Buhari said for a lasting peace in the country, efforts must be made to eradicate poverty and injustice.
President Buhari said a plan to map out grazing areas would soon be presented to the Nigerian Governors’ Forum as a temporary solution to the clashes.
He said cattle owners would be made to adopt other means of rearing their cattle.
President Buhari commended the centre for ensuring that the relative peace that had returned to Plateau State, just as he praised it for its on-going activity in Southern Kaduna.
He agreed with the centre that dialogue was always preferable to the use of law and order mechanisms and force in the resolution of conflicts.
In his remark, the executive director of the centre, David Harland, told President Buhari that following their success in facilitating the settlement of the inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in Plateau State, the group had moved to Kaduna State.
He expressed the hope that the techniques used in bringing peace to Plateau State would soon be deployed to deal with the Boko Haram insurgency and other conflicts in Nigeria.
