The Federal Government has made a shocking revelation after a minister of Agriculture revealed that the killer herdsmen that have been killing people are actually Boko Haram members. The Federal Government on Tuesday revealed that rampaging herdsmen killing people in many parts of the country are not actually Fulani herdsmen but Boko Haram insurgents.
This was revealed yesterday by the Minister of State for Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobiri at a public hearing on ways to solving the perennial clashes between herdsmen and farmers held at the Senate on Tuesday.
While trying to clear the Fulani herdsmen from the incessant killing, Lokpobiri said that none of the violent herdsmen captured were able to speak the Nigerian languages.
“Available statistics to us in government show that contrary to media reports that these violent herdsmen are the conventional Nigerian Fulanis, they are not, as none of those apprehended was able to speak any of the Nigerian languages, giving strong credence to the possibility of the violent herdsmen to be another form of terrorists in the mode of Boko Haram”, he said.
He revealed that the government has put plans in place to curb the massacre that has been going on for a while.
Lokpobiri said: “Whereas Brazil can boast of 220million cows, Nigeria can boast of less than 19million cows. It may also interest you to know that because of the nomadic nature of our herdsmen, our milk production is in the negative. Nigerian cows on the average produce of 1 litre a day, as opposed to the cows in Brazil and Saudi Arabia that produce as much as between 30 to 40 litres a day. And the reason is simple: when a cow moves from Maiduguri to Bayelsa, there is no way it can produce any milk.
“From what we have discovered through the experts, cows don’t like movement; they just want to eat, drink water and rest and give you good milk. In Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina and some other countries, the cows do not move, they are confined to ranches, grass, water provided for them and they provide the desired quantity of milk and quality of meat.
“As part of the solutions as a ministry, we have consulted widely and also studied the literatures that exist in the sector. And we have realised that the best way to solve this problem will be the creation of ranches.
“If we create ranches we will provide what the Fulani man is looking for. The ranches will have all modern amenities so that the family of the herdsmen can also have the same opportunities that other Nigerians have.
“They will have opportunity to go to school, access to health facilities, agro-allied industries that may be clustered within these ranches. We believe that the creation of ranches will be one of the solutions that we will put on the table.
“Mr President has directed that we should liaise with state governments because the Federal Government alone cannot do it. And we have contacted 19 state governors and nine states have already donated 5,000 hectares each for us to start the creation of these ranches.
“We had in the past about 415 grazing reserves. Out of that about 144 were gazetted and the rest not gazetted. Those grazing routes, most of them no longer exist. They have been encroached upon and grazing reserves without grasses is useless. So, what we want to do is what other countries are doing. Saudi Arabia is importing grasses from the USA and Sudan. That is why Saudi Arabia does not have this problem. There are no cattle movements in Saudi Arabia. What they have are ranches where these grasses are provided. And those cows are the most comfortable in the world because they stay in air-conditioned environment. And produce about 4.7m litres of milk per day and that is what they use to supply the entire Middle East.
“We believe that if we import Alfafa Grass Seeds, we are not saying that we want to import grasses as Saudi Arabia is doing.
“We want to import the grass seeds so that we can plant them in this 5,000 hectares that the state governments are donating, it will create immediate employment and create thousands of jobs.
“There will also be boreholes, small dams, veterinary services. We also believe that cattle breeding as a programme is going to be embarked upon by the Ministry of Agriculture.
“We are thinking about how to increase the productivity in Nigerian cows. Most of the female cows out of the less than 19million we have cannot conceive because of the long movement from one area to the other. So, we have resolved to import semen from Europe so that we can do artificial insemination so as to breed the productivity of cows. This is something that is done globally”.
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