Abia’s Exemplary Grazing Initiative

political notes Abia State Government has said it will establish modern grazing reserves as part of efforts to address the recurring conflicts between rural communities and herdsmen in the state. The government said the reserves, to be run as a business on a Public Private Partnership basis, would be equipped with modern facilities, with the herdsmen being made to pay fees for using the facilities. The Abia State model is a brilliant method for dealing with the bloody and destructive clashes between communities and cattle breeders. This problem has become dangerously widespread and incessant, and the federal and state governments must address themselves to it. Much as Nigerians need beef, the country really must control herders and their cattle and not allow them run roughshod over other people’s lives and livelihoods. What the Abia State government has proposed is, certainly, a neater approach compared with the House of Representatives’ suggestion for the establishment of grazing routes in the six geopolitical zones of the country. The lower chamber’s model would merely intensify the current archaic and problematic system of wandering carelessly with cattle from one part of the country to the other.