A foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has advocated a modern ranching model of livestock as a panacea in addressing the existential threat to national unity, occasioned by frequent clashes between farmers and herders in different parts of the country.
This advocacy was contained in an open commendation letter made available to newsmen in Abuja on Sunday, July 14, to the recently inaugurated Livestock Reform Implementation Committee (LRIC) co-chaired by President Bola Tinubu and Professor Attahiru Jega.
The former Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON) who hinged the dysfunctional status of many food basket communities in the country and the abysmal failure of the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), which gulped billions of Naira on farmers/herders clashes said modern ranching remains the answer.
Dismissing the grazing model, Okechukwu noted that the fundamental changes in the modern ranch model with features of complex top technologies and humane facilities like cattle cages, veterinary clinics, schools, and residential houses make a better option to the archaic grazing routes currently in use.
Okechukwu said: “President Bola Tinubu and Professor Attahiru Jega, co-chairmen of the Livestock Reform Implementation Committee in the interest of national unity, harmonious existence and prosperity to adopt modern ranch model as the solution provider to avoid roaming animals especially cattle that ravage crop farms.”
The APC chieftain also commended Mr President for exploring a lasting solution to the farmers/herders’ existential pandemic which polarised our dear countrymen and bred unprecedented insecurity, uncountable loss of lives, abject poverty, and hunger.
He urged the President to finance the Renewed Hope Livestock Mega Project not only from the national emergency fund but to go ahead and borrow, if need be to fund modern ranches in voluntary states; as the loan, if prudently managed will repay itself.
