…Says it’s waste of taxpayers money
The pan Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, has described the approval given by President Muhammadu Buhari to review grazing reserves in some states as not only a waste of taxpayers’ money but a sweet pipe dream in a fool’s paradise.
Its General Secretary, Chief Sola Ebiseni, in a statement in Akure, the Ondo state capital lamented that the President was “wasting taxpayers scare resources on a programme which conception lacks all conceivable growth capacity.
The statement partly reads: ” The approval by President Muhammadu Buhari to review, with dispatch, 368 grazing reserves across allegedly 25 states in the country to determine the levels of encroachment did not surprise Nigerians.
“It is instructive that the recommending and implementation committee is headed by Professor Ibrahim Gambari, the Chief of Staff to the President who, in conjunction with Prof. Attahiru Jega, during the first term of Buhari, presented a “Memorandum On Pastoralist-Farmers’ Conflicts And the search for peaceful Resolution” published in January 2018, which contained the same recommendations now being foisted on the nation.
“They have submitted, among other recommendations that “it is clear that Nigeria and indeed Africa have to plan towards the transformation of pastoralism into settled forms of animal husbandry.
“The establishment of grazing reserves provides the opportunity for practising a more limited form of pastoralism and is, therefore, a pathway towards a more settled form of animal husbandry.
“Grazing reserves are areas of land demarcated, set aside and reserved for exclusive or semi-exclusive use by pastoralists. Currently, Nigeria has a total of 417 grazing reserves all over the country, out of which only about 113 have been gazetted”.
“Thus, the present policy of the Buhari administration on grazing reserves is the implementation of the script by the Fulani intelligentsia.
“We recall and support the resolutions of the Nigerian governors, particularly from the South of the country, banning all forms of open grazing and it does not matter to us”, it stated.
