A new plan has been embarked on by the Federal Government last week to have a RUGA settlements programme in 12 states for herdsmen. Ruga is aimed at ending the insecurity arising from farmers-herder clashes in Nigeria which is meant to serve everyone involved in animal husbandry but most importantly to stop the roaming of cattle herders.
It is also aimed at increasing the quality of feed and access to animal care and private sector participation in commercial pasture production by way of investments. RUGA initiative is different from the National Livestock Transformation plan approved by the state governors under the auspices of the National Economic Council (NEC) chaired by Vice president Yemi Osinbajo.
The government claimed that the Ruga initiative was being politicised by those opposing it to create the impression of a hidden agenda and made it clear that the programme is voluntary. The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, announced that Buhari approved the Ruga settlement initiative earlier in the month of May.
Ogbeh said “We are going to build settlements where herders will live, grow their cattle and produce milk. The milk will be bought by a milking parlour thus preventing their wives from moving around with milk. This is especially to avert any conflict between the herders and the farmers.”.
The Federal Government has allocated the sum of N2.26bn in the 2019 budget for the development of national grazing reserves which is contained under the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Based on this analysis of this budget, there is no specific amount captured with the nomenclature of Ruga settlement.
It is true that government at the centre has gazetted lands in all states but because the idea is not to force this programme on anyone, the government has limited the take-off to the dozen states with valid requests.
A lot of people believe that this initiative means that the FG will deprive them of their land and hand it to the herdsmen, which may increase the conflict, while others think that this is the best step to resolve the conflicts as it will mean that we will see reduced open grazing by herders.