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 MACBAN Zonal Secretary for South-West, Maikudi Usman, 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 PUNCH had reported that 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.
Speaking on the PUNCH Online programme on Wednesday, 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.
Read Also
Thousands of job opportunities created through ONDIPA -AkeredoluAkeredolu charges pharmacists to research more on Indian hempAgain, gunmen invade Ibarapaland, number of victims unknown
“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.
Credit: Punch
NJOKUAL
September 16, 2021 at 11:46 amFarming is for all and sundry and no one have a monopoly of animals husbandry. Miyetti Allah should know that South and east ern part of Nigeria were the oil that lubricate the nation. I don’t eat beef so do many Nigerians so Miyetti Allah and his people should respect others in their own state. In the North they banned selling of alcohol the south didn’t protest.