Grazing Reserves: No Presidential Directive Yet – Governor Sule
…Says Buhari’s statement misunderstood
BY AHMED TUKUR, LAFIA – President Muhammadu Buhari has been grossly misconstrued over his recent pronouncement review on grazing reserves across the country, Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State has said.
Governor Sule explained President Buhari only directed the committee chaired by his Chief of Staff, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, to take stock and identify the present status of reserves across the country.
He said that the President, apart from directing the Gambari-led committee, has not told anybody what the next line of action would be.
Some state governors and other stakeholders have been kicking against the proposal
But Governor Sule explained that the idea is to have firsthand knowledge and information of the present status of the grazing sites.
In the words of Sule; “What the president said is that the committee headed by his Chief of Staff, Professor Ibrahim Gambari should go and identify all grazing reserves and bring.
“What is the president going to do with that, nobody knows. He has not told anybody. He has only said, go and collect the data, let us see whether some of the reserves exist, because they are some that may no longer be existing.
“For instance, if an expressway is now built on a grazing site, the president will not say remove it,” he explained.
Sule also said that the National Livestock Transformation Project (NLTP) recently launched in Awe Local Government Area of Nasarawa state is to assist in creating peace and harmony among herders and farmers.
The governor said that farmers presently cultivating in the land will be compensated adequately by the programme.
According to him; “They came to realize that some of this sites are supposed to be pure grazing reserves but people have encroached and have farmed in those areas and anybody farming in that area is actually somebody encroaching.
“By law and by our Constitution, those areas are supposed to be purely grazing reserves but out of their own kind gesture, they said whoever is farming there will be compensated in order to encourage peaceful coexistence between the farmers and herders”.
Sule also said that only herders presently identified by the government will have access to the facility, adding that as part of the planning, the state government went to an area where it already identified how many pastoralist are living there just as the government already has the number of Fulani that are living there.
He warned that any herdsman that goes into the site apart from those identified will be encroaching, adding that six other grazing reserves across the state will be developed in stages to accommodate more headers.
