July 05, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government has again, appealed to State governments to cooperate in ensuring that herders embrace ranching in ending the perennial Farmers-herdsmen clashes.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, restated the appeal in London during his engagements with some international media houses.
The minister is in London to engage the international media and think-tank on the progress the administration is making in various endeavours.
Speaking on the outcome of his respective engagements with “Reuters”, “The Economist” and “Times of London”, Mohammed said issues on security, economy, fighting corruption and the power sector took the centre stage.
Mohammed said President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had been able to find workable solutions to the perennial farmers-herdsmen conflicts, worsened by climate change, forest desertification and demographic growth.
“Our solutions which can be found in National Livestock Transformation Plan have ranching at its core. All we are asking, is for states to cooperate more with the federal government to ensure that ranching takes place in their states. Evidence has shown that in the states where ranching has been put in place, have less conflicts than the others”, he said.
Still on security, the minister told the media houses that the government is leaving no stone unturned to address the challenges and the efforts were yielding results.
“The success of our gallant military has resulted in about 51,000 insurgents surrendering between January and March this year alone. We have also been able to reintegrate about 1,600 former fighters, who had been able to learn one trade or the other”, he said.
The minister said the administration had taken very bold transformation steps to open up the economy.
He said the Buhari administration has invested in infrastructure development as key to unleashing growth, connecting communities, and helping in bridging the gap between the have and have not.
Mohammed said the signing of the Petroleum Industry Bill into law after twenty years of failure by previous administrations, was another success story of the administration.
“With the Petroleum Industry Act, we have completely opened up the oil and gas sector to investors. Importantly, we are now running NNPC as a commercial venture and we are going to be judged the way any other private company will be judged.
“This is already yielding dividends because a Canadian Trade Commission has already indicated interest to participate in the industry. Even oil giants like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell have indicated interest also to come and invest in the oil and gas industry.
“We hope that certain decisions being taken by investing countries and the EU will not negate the gains of PIA”, he said.
The Minister added that the 4,000km sub-Saharan gas line, which will deliver our gas to Europe via Morocco is also a giant stride.
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