Governor of Benue State, Samuel Orton has taken a swipe on the presidency for insisting that it is going to revive the grazing routes in Nigeria.
Orton who spoke to Channels TV hosts said the president and his advisers have erred because they are not in time tithe modern realities especially the fact that Nigeria has ceded off some parts of Nigeria to Cameroon in Bakassi besides the reality of increased population from the 1960s when the population was less than it is today.
He noted that the Land Use Act empowers individual state governors to administer the land as it best suit the interests of the state given her peculiarities.
Orton said the president should act like a Nigerian President and follow the overwhelming support for ranching than give himself to the idea of reviving routes that have been overtaken by time and modern realities like population, interstate roads, markets local and urban, rail routes, etc.
He maintained that grazing cattle by a set of people across Nigeria was obsolete and must be jettisoned for the adoption of a safer and more productive method that serves the best interests of all Nigerians.
Orton said: “I must not be a lawyer to know what land administration means in Nigeria because there is the land use Act of Nigeria.
Orton wondered at the possibility of reviving cattle routes and said they are “Obsolete grazing reserves and grazing routes, where are you going to have that?
“I have had a personal conversation with Mr President and his aides, that look when we have grazing reserve, we had a population of about 40 million people.
“Then it was a result of laws governing northern Nigeria. Now we are over two hundred people how do you expect the same thing? The land did not increase, with 200m people occupying the 923,000sqkm and even less because from it were ceded to Cameroon in Bakassi.
“Now you are talking about open grazing should supersede every other activity of government, whether it is school or road construction, markets and other things.
“I begin to wonder, how are we going to achieve this? If Mr President respects the law, the Land Use Act as the law gives the governor the power to preside over land administration on behalf of the people that they govern, and so, I am amazed and surprise that this was coming out of Mr President, as if he doesn’t have an attorney general; as if he doesn’t have lawyers to advise him.
“I think Mr President was misquoted or he did it out of error, and I think he should come out and apologise to Nigerians.
“There is no basis whatsoever for this to be going in when we know, we have the constitution and the laws that are available in Benue.
“The point is very simple when we have a National Economic Council, this is Mr President’s Council, inaugurated by him and Chaired by the Vice President of the federal republic of Nigeria.
“The 36 states governors and some key ministers including the minister of the FCT, are members of this Council, we saw this coming and resolved that how can we solve this problem?
“The entire council came out with a resolution that we established a committee that would go round and come up with recommendations that will help curb this problem that we have in Nigeria today.
“The committee did its work and came up with recommendations on the problems we have today and it was resolved at the end of the day after this committee visited several states and came back that ranching should be adopted.
“Whereas state that has enough land, to do open grazing should do it; if they want cattle RUGA, they should do it; if they want cattle colony, they should do it; whatever they want, they should do it; that states should be respected based on their peculiarities. This is what we came out with.
“A policy was adopted by the National Economic Council, Mr President chose not to implement the resolution of this Council.
“Rather, you hear about RUGA, you hear about cattle colony, open grazing and all that. If today, in Nigeria, the whole country, North and South, by that I mean the majority of the states in the north have accepted that reaching is the best way because of the challenge of security we have with all that.
“Whatever you say, the fact remains that banditry, kidnappings, armed robbery and so on are associated with open grazing and the majority of the states, have accepted that ranching should be accepted as a model to help curb insecurity; to hello curb the problems of farmers and herders.
“If Mr President with all the array of very irresponsible people around him could not advise him he will come out with a statement that he is reviving cattle grazing and reviving cattle routes, it surprises me, am amazed, are we in a banana republic?
Governor Orton believed that the President’s body language showed that he was predisposed to open grazing which sets the nation on fire given its associated dangers.
He said “Mr President has a set mind, I have spoken to him personally and his outing in the public also confirmed what he said to me.
“Mr President believed that for peace to reign, in Nigeria, there must be open grazing; there must be a provision for cattle routes; there must be provision for grazing areas.
“And according to him, Mr President feels that those grazing areas, that were enacted, especially in the northern areas, are cattle routes because I raised it with him, and he insisted that those who have encroached in it should be relocated.
“That was I told him, that President sir, look, we are no longer in the 50s or 60s because the population has outgrown the land that we have, the land is not increasing,
“Today we have over 200m people compared to the 40m that we had in the 1950s. There is no way we can talk about open grazing now.”
Orton mentioned that while Benue State remained disposed to ranchings like the overwhelming support from the north and the South, ranching was the way forward especially it meets the President’s job creation programme for the youth.
The governor Benue State said the opportunity in ranching outweighs the challenges associated with grazing, especially when viewed from the angel of insecurity that it breeds.
According to him: “In my state for example there is no room for Open grazing, but there is land for ranching. Thus as the global best practice, If we accept that this problem will be over, that is why most of my colleague governors irrespective of party affiliation from the south, have said the way to go is ranching.
“I have recommended to Mr President and his handlers that look just like we subsidized agriculture; we provide subsidy for fertilizer and other farm inputs; we can do the same thing for herdsmen because ranching is expensive compared to open grazing.
“We can actually help our herders by ensuring that we have subsidy in terms of water we provide because their cattle take a lot of water, in terms of we feeds that we provide and in several other ways.
“I can assure you, I am a farmer, I know the challenges we are talking about, I have a ranch, I know the challenges we are talking about. I know the potentials that we have.
“This is an opportunity we have to provide millions of jobs and also empower our people.
Nigeria in these six years has been taken back over 20 years. We are backwards, we are not progressing, we are back by some 20 years.
Orton said the President must be impressed upon by Nigerians we are determined to have a country where justice reign by democratic ethos.
He said the President must be called upon to promote federal character in his appointments at the national level because he said it has been skewed in a direction that down not promote national Unity.
“It amazes me for those who still keep quiet, I want to let them know, that the day of reckoning is coming. When nobody will have a place to run.
“It is our right, it is our duty to call Mr President to order, the where he is taking the country is not correct. That is why I took on him, when we are asked, is he not governing the country well; is he not abiding by the rules of the law; is he not governing the country according to the rules of the constitution of the country?
“That is why I came out the following day and told him that Mr President if anybody told you that you are governing the country according to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria they are telling you lies.
“They are sycophants and mediocre trying to milk from you, otherwise, look at the Federal Character Commission, are we saying that the appointments at the federal level represent the federal character, is it not nepotism?
“Mr President tends to keep a blind eye and people keep quiet about it, for some of us, we have given ourselves for speaking the truth. I am not just a Christian, I am a born again Christian.
“We believe in the Bible, we believe that other religion should exist, that is why you do not hear of any religious crisis here in Benue State.
“If you want to be a Christian; if you want to be an Islamic scholar, you want to practice Islam; you want to practice Paganism or you want to practice traditional religion, you are free to do that.”
The governor maintained that he remained an unhappy man due to the level of bloodshed in the state and the displacement of over 1.5 million people being managed in the IDP camps.
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