SAN FRANCISCO, January 08, (THEWILL) –Â The Federal Government has decided to set up a cattle colony on 5,000 hectares where herdsmen could live and keep their livestock in order to solve the continued herdsmen/farmers conflict in parts of the country.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, disclosed this during a two day ‘2018 Strategy Retreat’ organised by Synergos for special advisers and directors in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Abuja.
He revealed that the cattle colony project will start immediately following the offer of five hectares of land each by 16 states in the country adding that President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to help the Ministry with money for the project.
“On the issue of cattle we have to start immediately, 16 states have given us land to work on,” he revealed.
“The programme is not going to be cheap. Mr President has personally informed me that if we seek help from him he will give it to us over and above the budget we have, and when that budget is released I plead with all of you to come on board to work hard to achieve results.
“We are talking of cattle colonies not ranches so to speak, where we will provide water, grass, training for herdsmen, cattle breeding and insemination.
“We have to deal with an urgent problem, cattle rearing and the conflicts between farmers and herdsmen, and actually bring it to a halt. I know that some people argue that the culture of open grazing is our culture, but when a culture begins to develop dangerous trends leading to warfare between people and bloody clashes and death that culture is due for re-examination; if it is harmful we reform it.
“Nigerians are getting extremely uncomfortable with these killings and we may make political statements and issue palliatives and ask the police and army to go after killers. Let us do our own duty by eliminating the conflict by creating cattle colonies.”
Ogbeh later met with the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, and the governors of Kaduna, Benue, Niger, Nasarawa and Taraba states over the violent attacks and herdsmen killings in their states.
At the meeting, which was at the instance of the Interior Minister, strategies and measures to end the crisis which had claimed hundreds of lives in the states was discussed.
Dambazau, said the government was not happy over the criminality going on in the middle belt states, adding that the meeting was summoned to proffer solutions to the problem.
