TheCable

Eyinnaya Abaribe, the senate minority leader, says the root cause of the farmer-herder crisis is people’s attachment to land.

Abaribe said this on Friday during the ‘Urgent Conversations’ series, a programme hosted by Radio Now.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member said until the question of whether Nigerians can easily ignore matters relating to a land they are attached to is answered, the farmer-herder conflict will always resurface.

He said: “We also need to ask a question that is it possible for Nigerians to ignore the matter of attachment to land because it is very critical for us to have this conversation. I read somewhere that close to 80 percent of Nigeria’s land is in the 19 states in the north.

“About 22 percent or so is in the 18 states of the south and somebody in the south is being told to leave his land in order to be alive so that another person can stay there, how do you think the person would feel?

Abaribe noted that if there is “no quick access to justice, there is absolutely no way people that are aggrieved will agree that something is being done for them”.

Away from the farmer-herders crisis, he said Nigeria’s problems can be solved if the right person, who believes in equality, is put in a position of power on the basis of merit.

The senator said: “The base is fairness and justice. You must deal with everybody equally and once you do that then people will buy into your solutions and once they buy into your solutions, then you can continue to have a viable country.

“It’s just that among governors and the presidency, what we see is the ‘kabiyesi’ democracy, where the man on top, it is only what he says that will happen.

“We need to move away from every other thing and start to think about meritocracy. That’s just it. Once you don’t have the right person you will continue to have these problems. Unfortunately, what we have is one person in office trying to bring in someone that he is comfortable with, not someone that can do the work.”