Aareonakakanfo of Yorubaland,
Gani Adams, on Wednesday, knocked the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association
of Nigeria for saying that a cow may cost up to N2 million with the
anti-grazing law.
According to Adams, the people of
Southern Nigeria, especially the Yoruba people in the South-West will start
eating fish and other alternatives to beef.
He also said the North can’t use
its cattle bought by the people of Southern Nigeria to threaten the people.
Adams spoke on Wednesday as a
guest on PUNCH Online interview programme, The Roundtable.
Adams was reacting to a statement
credited to the MACBAN Zonal Secretary of Myetti Allah Cattle Breeders
Association during a one-day public hearing organised by the state House of
Assembly on the anti-open grazing bill on September 8, 2021. Lagos consumes
over 6,000 heads of cattle daily and over 1.8 million heads of cattle annually,
according to the State Commissioner for Agriculture, Abisola Olusanya.
The bill titled, ‘A bill for a law to Prohibit Open Cattle Grazing In Lagos State,
the Trespass of Cattle Land And For Other Connected Purposes’, had scaled
second reading in the House.
The move was in consonance with
the resolution of the 17 Southern governors who had on July 5, 2021, “set a
timeline of Wednesday, 1st September, 2021 for the promulgation of the
anti-open grazing law in all member states”.
Aside from Lagos, Governor Rotimi
Akeredolu of Ondo State had on August 31, 2021, signed into law, the
Anti-Grazing Bill passed by the State House of Assembly.
Some other governors in the
Southern part of the country had also signed the bill into law in the last few
weeks with a move geared towards curbing the farmer-herder crisis and attendant
insecurity in the region.
Adams commended the Southern governors for banning open
grazing in the region and for supporting the move with legal backing.
He said, “Countries are moving
towards creating a secured environment for their people and in a situation
where a profession within agriculture is creating problems, creating insecurity
for us in every region, the governors of the South have right to decide how to
protect the lives and property of their citizens.
“I agree totally with the
Southern Governors on anti-grazing laws and I believe the best thing to do now
is to implement that law and to watch the states and to even appeal to them
that they should sign that bill backed their state assemblies into law because
it is very important because of their citizens.
“If they said cows will cost two
million naira, if it is too costly, we can subscribe to be eating fish and all
other content that is eatable that we can use to balance our meals because our
lives are very important – if you are lifeless, you can’t eat cow, if you are
in an unsafe environment, you can’t eat cow.
“When you are living in a panic
environment, there would be no economic buoyancy because investors will not
come and invest in that environment.
“If they said that cows will be
too expensive, we too will start our initiative based on ranching, we will
start our own agricultural system and try to encourage our people to rear cows
within our region. The Western Region had done it before and it succeeded by
giving us our own livestock through the agricultural ministry.”
Adams also commended five
governors in the South-West zone for starting the South-West Security Network
Agency, also known as Amotekun, while urging Lagos, and the other 11 state
governments in Southern Nigeria to key in to the development and have their own
security outfit.
The overwhelming insecurity in
the region had forced the governors of the South-West to inaugurate the
security outfit last year to tackle peculiar security threats in the zone. The
Amotekun Corps had also got the constitutional backing of the state assemblies
in the zone.
Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti and most
recently Osun states have since kick-started the operations of the security
outfit.
In the South-East, a joint
security vigilante named Ebube Agu was inaugurated in April 2021.
The security outfit had been set
up by the five governors in the zone — Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), Willie Obiano
(Anambra), Dave Umahi (Ebonyi), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), and Hope Uzodinma
(Imo) but the outfit has not been functional since its Chairman, Major General
Obi Umahi (retd.), resigned his appointment in June over lack of funding,
amongst other reasons.
The South-South has not come up
with a regional security outfit.
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