North Has Enough Land For Ranching – Senator Abaribe

Abia South Senator, Enyinnaya Abaribe, has said there is no need to move cows across the country since the North has enough land for ranching.

Senator Abaribe said ranching remained the solution to herders and farmers clashes across the country.

In a Channels TV interview on Tuesday, he said the former governor of Kano State, Umar Ganduje, had confirmed that the North has enough land for herdsmen in Nigeria.

The former Minority Whip of the Senate, who discussed the ranching bill that passed second reading in the Red Chamber, said, “What baffles some of us really is that we see solutions and we pretend that we don’t see those solutions. The matter is very clear, there is nowhere in the world where people are left to roam everywhere.

“The best cattle producing countries in the world are done through ranching. The North has more than enough land for ranching.

“Even Awolowo set up ranches when he was a Premier. This is not rocket science to the Northern governors. The point really is when you engage them outside of their porterhouses of power, they tell you the truth.”

Abaribe said the issue of enough grass for cows in the North can be solved using Malaysian method of planting grass that can resist North temprature.

He said the argument by some Northern lawmakers that most of the herdsmen do not know their places of origin sounds suspicious. He argued that any Nigerian who cannot remember his/her place of origin cannot be called a citizen.

“So, it is not grass, it is just people roaming around who want to colonize a place and take over people’s lands. And until we say truthful to each other, there is no way we can go beyond this mountain of whether it can be done or not.

“It was unfortunate that the Buhari government was the government that openly supported people who are not Nigerians.

“There was a funny part of debate on the floor of the Senate on that same ranching bill. When we said that everybody should go back to their state of origin, some people got up and said no, that these people don’t have states of origin.

“If anybody doesn’t have a state of origin in Nigeria, it means he is not a Nigerian and that is all we have been saying all along,” he said.