The national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has said using military action alone will not put an end to herdsmen killings in the country.
Naija News reports that the former Lagos governor made this known while speaking on Saturday at the opening of the 2021 annual Arewa House Lectures, which he chaired in Kaduna.
The lecture was on “Reduction of the Cost of Governance for Inclusive Growth and Youth Development in Northern Nigeria in a Post- COVID-19 era”.
Tinubu in his message to the federal government on the herdsmen crisis stated that problems that are essentially of an economic origin must also have an economical solution.
He said: “Enhanced security may be the necessary first step, but it cannot be the only step.
“We cannot resolve this problem by holding on to one-dimensional answers. We must all be dispassionate in our search for solutions.
“These challenges are multi-faceted and so the solutions must be.
“The issue of insecurity, unemployment and extremism has many things to do with governance, over time. We must tackle our deep and widespread poverty.
“If we limit government’s role under the erroneous assumption that government spending is intrinsically unproductive, then we tether ourselves to failure.”
Tinubu stated that Nigerians would do well to critically study how other populous nations such as the UK, US, Germany and China charted their course during their formative years.
“You will see that they did not adhere to small government or the purportedly free market,” he said.
“Government engaged in massive spending on infrastructure and education while also engaging in policies that protected industrial development and key aspects of the agricultural sector.
“Only when they matured and held advantages over other nations, did the UK and US begin to champion free markets and small government.
“We would do well to understand this history and learn what it means for our own pursuit of development.”