During his interview with Arise TV channel on Thursday, June 10, 2021, the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari indicated that there have always been grazing routes across the south for cattle and the federal government will make moves to recover them.
The president stated in the interview: “What I did was to ask him (Malami) to go and dig the gazette of the First Republic when people were obeying laws.
“There were cattle routes and grazing areas. Cattle routes were for when they (herdsmen) were moving upcountry, north to south or east to west. They had to go through there.”
The statement generated a lot of reactions from sections of the country especially, governors from the south-east and south-south geo-political zones who have since been against the creation of grazing routes in their states.
However, despite the backlash it has generated, the federal government insists on going ahead with its plans of retracing and recovering established grazing routes across the entire country as it sees the effort as the only viable long-term solution to the frequent clashes between the herdsmen and farmers.
Owing to the fact that some of these grazing routes may have been replaced with public infrastructures such as roads and other public utilities, officials from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development – the ministry charged with the responsibility of retracing and recovering the grazing routes – say the assignment is limited to those routes which are still open and which are located in non-conflict zones.
The Ag. Director, Animal Husbandry Department of the Ministry, Winnie Lai-Solarin, said:
“There are some stock routes that we have across the country, and in the past, we had monuments along these stock routes, particularly the primary stock routes.
“And in the course of farming or other human activities along those stock routes, the monuments were altered, but we know where they are. So we are saying that some of them can be retraced.
“And this is particularly for areas that are not encroached upon as of now. The pastoralists know the routes, and on some of those routes, you will see the pieces of the monuments along them.
“So for those that are not encroached upon and are not in conflict zones, we will go ahead to retrace and guide the pastoralists along them. We didn’t get to where we are today in one day and so we cannot expect that every pastoralist should suddenly start ranching now.
“Some would still have to move but let’s keep the movement as safe as possible and in areas that are not conflict zones. That is what I am saying. We are not going to retrace stock routes where there are infrastructures that are for the public good.”
The Ministry also explained that the grazing routes have been classified into three – primary, secondary and tertiary levels. To provide further clarifications on these classifications, an official who preferred to be anonymous said:
“We need to create safe places that are easy for them (herders) to graze their cattle so that they won’t need to travel on the roads. We have primary and secondary stock routes and in some cases, we have tertiary stock routes.
“The primary stock routes are the major routes that run in a North-to-South direction from the Sahel to the coastal market. And then, there are some major routes that run inter-state from the North, while others run intra-state.”
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