Buhari’s N6.25bn Katsina ranch project to end herders/farmers clashes – VON DG

By Christiana Ekpa

The Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, has said that the flag-off N6.25 billion cattle Ranch project in Katsina by President Muhammadu Buhari, will end farmers/herders clashes.
Okechukwu said contrary to most headlines which posted Electronic Transmission of election results by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the most important event of the week, the foremost to him is the flag-off N6.25 billion ranch in Katsina.
It could be recalled that on the occasion of the visit of President Buhari to Katsina last week Thursday, the Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, announced that the Federal Government has approved N6.52 billion for ranch development in the state, and disclosed that N5 billion of the amount had already been paid into the state government’s account.
“This is the first direct intervention through the state government with regard to Federal Government’s ranch development initiative,” Governor Aminu Masari deposed.
Reacting to this, Okechukwu said “For me the flag-off of the N6.25 billion Katsina Ranch is the end-game for the incessant and controversial Herders/Farmers Clashes in Nigeria and hence the foremost news of the week. Am surprised that most editors didn’t give it the prominence it deserved.”
Asked why he rated Ranch development as more important than transmission of election results electronically, an issue which is at the heart of free and fair elections in Nigeria. And which has polarised the polity, he dished out a lengthy narrative of the uncountable harm the Herders/Farmers clashes did to fatherland.
He said it was because of the harm’s way posed by the Herders/Farmers clashes to our corporate existence that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the Governors of the 36 states, under the National Economic Council (NEC) came up in 2018 with the blueprint of National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), as a panacea.
Narrating further, Okechukwu said “The Katsina Ranch is a poster boy of the National Livestock Transformation Plan, a good news and we need more urgently.”
“I doubt if there is any farming community in Nigeria, especially in the Middle Belt that did not loose one person? What of Food Insecurity unleashed by Herders/Farmers clashes? And you talk of polarization of the country; methinks the clashes polarised our dear countrymen more than elections? It regrettably promoted our fault lines.”