USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: THE IMPERATIVE OF RANCHING BY STATE GOVERNORS.

EDITED

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-------- Original message --------

From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>

Date: 06/02/2021 17:24 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: THE IMPERATIVE OF RANCHING BY STATE GOVERNORS.

THE IMPERATIVE OF RANCHING BY STATE GOVERNORS IN NIGERIA.                                 

                   By.        

                              

           Olayinka Agbetuyi       

Fatal herder-farmer conflict has now assumed a motif of narratives of Nigerian community life that it can no longer be conveniently ignored.  It therefore behoves state governors as figures empowered by the Constitution to take urgent and immediate step to find closure to these heart rending narratives by constituents.

I have suggested that waiting for federal government led initiatives may be getting rather late in view of red tape, lack of immediate concern because of the distance from the centre to the communities directly affected,misappropriation of funds and outright nonchalance.  What then is the alternative?

The most practical alternative that comes to mind is the establishment of anti- herder, state cooperatives by state governments ( even across party lines) to establish modern ranches across the belts, whereby states literally put their money where their mouth is and achieve in one fell swoop both food and physical security.  But how can this be done in the era of vanishing resources ( in more senses than one?)

Rather than wait for the end of the fiscal year when many honest state governors return their security votes to the centre unspent, a urgent cause impels the attention of the governors.

Rather than crooked governors diverting unspent security votes into their own accounts, false accounts created to defraud the unsuspecting citizenry;  rather than pretending there are no security concerns within their borders, crooked governors can turn a new leaf by joining hands with their more forthright counterparts in an urgent cause that impels the attention of the governors.

Governors of herder- resistant states can lead the agricultural leap into the future by immediately pledging half their security votes as collateral to financing bodies to secure adequate credit to launch collective ranches at strategic locations declared herder- free zones from where commercial production of beef processing can commence in ernest  even in the current financial year and  subsequent revenues and expansion of participant states utilised to expand the scheme.  If 15 states of the 36 states comprising the most vociferous herder resistant states in the South and Middle Belt pool resources together in this manner with part of their security votes pledged as collateral for credit, we know how much this comes to in real terms.  Other multilateral credit can then be sought as the project develops.

The programme will be accompanied by effective advertising campaigns for communities to shun ' killer cattle meat' in favour of the state controlled life sustaining meat from the state ranches.

Because state ranches will be fortified with state of the art security both electronic and physical and because patronage of herder produced meat will be a thing of the past, herder- farmer conflict will belong to Nigeria's past history, commencing this year!

State governments can then mutually arrange to have heavily guarded sixteen wheeler trucks transport beef from the ranches to designated marketing depots as it is the practice in developed countries for purchase by consumers.  From these large depots distribution networks will go to smaller markets and directly to consumers.  The job creation prospects are immense as well as genuine national integration potentials.

For take off, lets say two large ranches are established in the South West one in Ogbomoso (to take care of the hinterland) and the other in the Egbado region.  In the South East one can be established in Auchi ( for the hinterland) another in Onitsha.   For the  Middle Belt  two can be established in Makurdi and Jos.  From these initiating large ranches satellite ranches can be created as the years go by from the projects profitability ( I am sure government economic advisers can flesh up the wherewithal of the operational details.)  There could be multiple cooperatives.  For instance if the projects earmarked for completion are stalled by lack of agreements for operational details say between South West and South East states that should not affect separate agreements between companies used to doing business with each other within the same zone e.g Odua Group of Companies from going ahead with their own separate plans immediately.

In sum, the onus is now on the state governments affected by fatalities in  herder-farmer conflicts to accelerate the establishment of modern animal husbandry within their states through the establishment of large cooperative ranches to serve the beef needs of multiple states and discourage herder animal husbandry in the subsidised pricing, in part driven by economy of scale and advertising campaign for patronage.

Olayinka Agbetuyi

February 6, 2021

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