Nigeria lost 6500 citizens, $14.7bn and 62,000 others displaced in record 850 perennial attacks on farmers in the middle belt region of the country, a report has said.

The report which was an ‘Assessment of current responses to attacks on farmers in Nigeria’ titled “Responses to Farmers and Herders conflicts in the Middle Belt Region of Nigeria” said the losses were recorded between 2010 and 2015.

It was presented yesterday in Abuja by Dr Chris Kwaja a Research Fellow of Search for Common Ground (SFCG) Nigeria at the forum on farmer-herder relations in Nigeria (FFARN) organised by the Search for Common Ground (SFCG) Nigeria and attended by conflict resolution experts, academics and researchers from government and civil society organisations (CSOs) and is part of a “Amplifying the Expertise of African Peacebuilding Practitioners and Scholars” grant by the Carnegie Corporation.

According to Kwaja, the late Norther Premier Sir Ahmadu Bello in 1965 created 415 grazing reserves and routes in the north but that urbanization and non-gazette of the routes remains a challenge of utilization.

The findings which will be presented to a marked governmental and non-governmental stakeholders shows that concerted efforts by government to resolve the crisis include the establishment of the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) in 1989; deployment of security agencies since 2001 and actions by traditional and community leaders among others.

He also listed ‘key enablers’ of the conflicts including competition for same natural resources of land and water, rapid population growth, unresolved issue around cattle routes and grazing reserves; and climate changes among others.

“However part of the fall out of these protracted crisis include militarization of the society and proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALWs),” he said.

He therefore urged the Federal Government to work with states and local communities to change strategies and domesticate practical policies to end the clashes.

The Search for Common Ground (Search) Nigeria, Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum (CPRF) SFCG CPFR Project Lead Mrs Bukola Ademola-Adelehin, said researches have shown that the crisis is more of livelihood and not ethno-religious and is also peculiar and dynamic in places where the crisis occurred.

According to her, the event among others was meant to find lasting solutions and common grounds for harmonious relationship between farmers and herders as obtained in the past and that the forum apart from Nigeria is also being held in Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Attacks on Farmers has costs 6500 lives, $13bn in 5 years – Chris Kwaja