Senior Special Assistant, Media and Publicity to the President, Mallam Garba Shehu, on Tuesday, 22nd December, said that there was need to stop herdsmen from roaming all over the country to prevent clashes with farmers.

Shehu spoke when he featured on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme.

The presidential spokesman was responding to the allegation that President Muhammadu Buhari was grabbing lands to dole out to herdsmen. The allegation was made by a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Katch Ononuju, who also featured on the programme.

Ononuju had said the government did not care about the lives of its citizens, hence, the continued kidnappings, killings and clashes between farmers and herders. But Shehu blamed the actions of the herdsmen on the drying of grazing lands in the north.

He said: “This country has a grazing problem because the herders are mostly Fulani. The challenge is from these places they had practiced, you know, the encroachment by desert leading to drying up of a lot of grazing lands in the northern-most parts of the country.

“This has put pressure on the herders who have been looking to the south-west green grass so that their cattle will eat and also have water to drink. It is a global climate situation which is unfortunate considering what has happened along the Lake Chad basin.

“I’m glad that governors of the north are coming together to say let us resolve this problem of grazing because we have to stop these herders from roaming and eating up our crops all over the country.

“They drive their cattle into farmlands and eat up the crops. The farmers fight back and the killings follow. The country cannot continue in this way.

“The president has no plan to fish for a land other than the one he has inherited from.