ON July 9, 2024, President Bola Tinubu approved the creation of a new ministry, the Ministry of Livestock Development. In the same vein, the president inaugurated the Renewed Hope Livestock Reform Implementation Committee with the mandate of providing sector-focused solutions to address the social chasm resulting from the age-long attacks by herders on farmers that the government habitually calls “farmers-herders clashes.” Earlier, specifically on September 14, 2023, the National Livestock Reforms Committee headed by a former governor of Kano State and current chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, had recommended the creation of a “Ministry of Livestock Resources.” Its creation, said the committee, would, among others, ensure the reduction of the bloodletting that resulted from the bloody encounters between farmers and nomadic cattle herders.
The establishment of the new ministry has naturally provoked a barrage of queries from Nigerians. While many ask why Nigeria needs another bureaucracy at a time when the country is reputed to be brimming with bureaucratic overload, others ask what the efficacy of the new ministry will be in fighting Nigeria’s food crisis. Some others allege that the presidency was blackmailed into taking this decision due to its quest for a second term of office. However, in a seeming reply to these befuddling wonders, President Tinubu said that even though there had been general expression of doubts about a lasting solution to the problems of the sector, he had never wavered in his conviction that a solution to the challenges was achievable.
To be sure, the establishment of a new ministry is baffling. Only in February this year, the Tinubu government expressed what it called a commitment to implementing the Stephen Oronsaye report. Now, in another breath, it is getting itself saddled with another bureaucratic bottleneck. The Oronsaye committee had come up with an 800-page report which recommended a drastic reduction in the number of government agencies. It recommended that 263 statutory agencies be reduced to 161, 38 agencies abolished, 52 agencies merged, and 14 others reverted to departments in ministries. The aim of the report was to achieve a reduction in the cost of governance. If the Tinubu government was indeed committed to the ideals behind the Oronsaye report’s implementation, it would not have floated a new ministry. How could the government be talking about reducing the cost of governance and making noise about implementing the Oronsaye report on the restructuring and rationalization of government parastatals and agencies while also creating a new ministry, thus increasing the agencies of government?
To say the least, the new ministry has a dubious mandate. When did livestock development cease being a core mandate of the agriculture ministry? Just what will the agriculture ministry be doing now that it has been divested of such a core mandate? There is no doubt that the bloody attacks on farmers by herders is a major challenge in Nigeria. It has resulted in massive loss of lives. The attacks have led to farmers fleeing their farmlands in order to safeguard their lives and indeed, a presidential spokesman is on record as saying that it was better for farmers to have their lands seized than to get killed. As a matter of fact, stout defence of the murderous herders was a major feature of the immediate past government under President Muhammadu Buhari, an incubus which the Tinubu government inherited.
The new ministry will ostensibly focus on cattle even when the problems being faced by other sub-sectors are humongous. For instance, the poultry corridor of the livestock sub-sector of agriculture is almost comatose at the moment. The Federal Government has stood idly by in the face of the spike in the prices of soybeans, maize and other items critical to its sustenance. Indeed, it is on record that a huge percentage of poultry farmers have left poultry farming due to the insurmountable challenges that have all but emasculated the sub-sector. The question that arises from the above is salient: is the government to create a ministry to solve the challenges faced by every sector? Given the crises in the poultry sub-sector, is the government going to establish a Ministry of Poultry? The inescapable conclusion is that Nigeria is badly afflicted with governmental directionlessness.
It is difficult to counter the allegation that the establishment of the livestock ministry was mainly to placate the violent herders who have been labelled terrorists by the Global Terrorism Index. For a long time now, the herders have violently resisted state laws banning open grazing. Only recently, they staged a violent assault on Amotekun operatives in Ondo State. It is befuddling that instead of asking them to obey the law, the Tinubu government chose to create a ministry to essentially placate them. If the herders scoffed at the law until now, what guarantee is there that their murderous onslaughts on farmers and other categories of Nigerians will cease with the mere creation of a new ministry? Has the government confronted the terrible ideological mindset that causes the herders to regard virtually every land in the country as a grazing field for their cattle?
Besides, it is a notorious fact that Nigeria is a debt-hobbled country. So why create another bureaucracy that will eat into the available resources? What exactly will the new Ministry of Livestock Development be able to do that cannot be tackled under the Department of Livestock Development in the existing Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security? It is clear that the government is only interested in playing games with Nigerians, flying kites whenever it wants, and not that it has definite programmes and a direction to take the country out of the economic woods.
We advise the government to make up its mind on what it wants. The current cocktail of contradictory positions portrays it in extremely negative light. Sad!
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