The Bormo State Governor, Prof Babagana Zulum has called for a shift from short-term to medium and longer-term sustainable solutions to insurgency and food security among other stakeholders in the Lake Chad region.

Governor Zulum who made this call on Thursday at the food security technical session of the Lake Chad Governors’ Forum meeting held at the University of Maiduguri said there is a need for the national sub-national governments and the Internal partners to invest heavily in large-scale irrigation

“There is a need for us as key players both at the nationals, subnationals and international partners to invest heavily in large scale irrigation system, where we will have at least one large scale irrigation to address food security, poverty and unemployment “, Zulum said.

The Governor said, “At the International conference, they talked about the quality of food and not only quantity and I think in Africa we should also talk about the quality of food we eat.”

“We need to develop a strong ecosystem to address climate change, degradation and desert encashment, we need to move from subsistence farming to large-scale farming”, he said.

Also, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abubakar Kyari Saud ” people of the Lake Chad region have to shift from agriculture for the stomach to agriculture for the pocket, as subsistence agriculture can no longer guarantee food security.”

He said there is also a need for efficient water resource management and irrigation farming to complement the rainy season farming, as climate affects the annual rainfall.

In his submission, the country representative of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Dominque Koffy Kouacou described climate charge, Boko Haram insurgency, low yield seed and livestock and degradation are some of the challenges facing the region.

He called for change from dialogue to collective action to address the myriads of challenges facing the nation.