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By Nasir Kura
The National Economic Council (NEC) on Thursday approved a new National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) to address the incessant crises between farmers and herdsmen in the country.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the monthly NEC meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi state said the plan was contained in a memo submitted to the council by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr. Audu Ogbeh.
He said government would use the plan to attract N2 trillion into the country’s livestock sector.
He said the plan was designed to enable leading agriculture business emerge from the livestock sector as in the farming sector.
“NLTP has been backed up with the ECOWAS Heads of state and government approval since 2005, because whatever we are doing in the livestock sector must incorporate the ECOWAS protocol, otherwise whatever success that is recorded in Nigeria can be complicated by the ECOWAS arrangement that we are part of. NLTP is about creating condition to launch the peaceful transformation of the Nigerian livestock ecosystem to add atleast N2 trillion to the economy,” he said.
The governor said many obstacles have hampered the current policies and strategic intention at national and state levels to improve livestock production in the country.
He said some of the obstacles include limited knowledge of Nigerian livestock asset by size, locations, water and insecurity.
“The approach is to invest in the livestock sector to provide ranches, mitigating the escalating crisis between pastoralists and farmers. The startegy would be supported by the development of an implementation plan which Mr. President had already approved, that provides a guiding framework to states for implementing NLTP which will be implemented in phases,” he said.
The governor also told journalists the balance in the federation accounts as at December 31, 2018, saying the Excess Crude stands at $497,864,626.08, Stabilization Account stands at N29,672,829,101.47, and Natural Resources Development Fund stands at N135,476,046,912.57.
