The Tor Tiv, Prof. James Ayatse, said establishment of ranches was the only solution to the recurring clashes between Farmers and Herdsmen in the country.

Ayatse said this on Friday in Abuja at a two-day National Security Summit.

He said that regulating the movement of the herdsmen would be difficult, adding that it was only practicable on paper.

Ayatse said that the country stood to benefit from the introduction of ranches as jobs would be created for Nigerians.

He said that ranching would not stop free movement of herdsmen especially if they were passing through a particular state.

“If you allow free movement without control, you put everybody at risk and this is what we are seeing in Benue, ranching is part of the control.”

The Tor Tiv said that creating ranches did not go against the ECOWAS Treaty of free movement of persons in the sub-region as it was being thought.

He said that a committee had been constituted in conjunction with the police in his domain, to identify the “bad eggs” and hand them over to the police.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Benue House of Assembly had recently passed a Bill prohibiting open grazing and allowing the establishment of ranches in the state.

The bill is entitled: “Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017.”

The bill stipulates that anybody who engages in open nomadic livestock herding or grazing in the state, outside the authorised ranches, shall be guilty of an offence and shall on conviction, be liable to five years imprisonment or N1 million fine or both.

On criminality in the country, Ayatse blamed unscrupulous politicians for breeding thugs and abandoning them after elections.

He called on INEC to evolve modern strategies to check issues of ballot box snatching and other forms of election rigging in the country.

Ayatse said that unless Nigeria as a country planned toward having an enduring security system, it would fail in other aspects of national development. (NAN)