Miyetti Allah of the Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) said it will continue to challenge the anti-grazing laws introduced by some state governments in court.
Alhaji Baba Ngelzarma, the National Secretary of the
association, while speaking with newsmen in Abuja on Thursday said the
pastoralists, who were largely uneducated, would view the anti-grazing
laws, when implemented, as forcing them out of their ancestral and
cultural way of earning a living.
According to him, implementing the laws will create another crisis in
the country. He, however, noted that grazing reserves across the
country had been devastated through encroachment by farmers, destruction
by desertification or neglect on the part of the government.
In his words, 'we are going to challenge this anti-grazing law in
courts and some of us have taken the matter to international court
because that is the only option left for us. This is a breach of the
constitution and the fundamental human rights of our members. We are not
against ranching. The pastoralist will embrace it but that cannot be
right away but it will be overtime. You have to educate them to know the
benefits of ranching. These pastoralists will take the law as something
that is totally strange, a plot to take them away from what they
inherited from their forefathers. They will see it as a failure on their
part. If these grazing reserves that we have in the North can be
maintained and rehabilitated, with the provision of boreholes and
grasses, I see no reason why the pastoralist will continue to roam
around'.
“We are sensitising our people to the need for them to remain
peaceful; not to originate or look for trouble, not to encroach into
peoples’ farms,’’ he said.
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