The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN) has urged the Federal Government to deal decisively with Nigeria’s porous borders that makes it possible for the massive proliferation of arms and impose the implementation of ECOWAS transhumance certificate protocol to check influx of herdsmen from neighbouring countries.
This was contained in the communique issued after a one-day national executive meeting of MACBAN and the Chairman Board of Trustees (BoT), the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, in Abuja.
The meeting also urged the Federal Government to carry out sensitisation and re-orientation programmes for pastoralists and revamp the nomadic education programme for their children.
The meeting was held with the 36 state chairmen and FCT, and aimed to review the security situation in the country as it affects its members and the continuing stereotyping by the social and the mass media that all herdsmen are criminals and bandits.
The communique said over five million cattle have been lost as a result of banditry, cattle rustling, kidnapping and climate change, and appealed to the Federal Government to introduce social support programmes to alleviate the huge losses of livestock.
