Aminu Tambuwal, Sokoto State governor and Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Governors’ Forum, on Monday advised President Muhammadu Buhari against grazing reserves.
He charged the president to resuscitate grazing reserves only in states or areas where the people were interested.
Tambuwal said open grazing is not even in the interest of Fulani herdsmen.
The Sokoto governor, who spoke in Lagos during the 63rd birthday lecture of Richard Akinnola, a renowned journalist and author, stated that it is high time Nigeria had a rethink on open grazing.
President Buhari had last week approved recommendations of a committee to review “with dispatch,” 368 grazing sites, across 25 states in the country, “to determine the levels of encroachment.”
But Tambuwal who delivered the lecture on ‘Security Challenges in Nigeria and its Implications for Sustainable Development’ said that Nigeria should rethink open grazing.
According to him, the president should only revive grazing reserves where the people are interested. This, he noted, would curb the rising insecurity in the country.
“Why must someone from Sokoto be pursuing his cattle to Delta State?” Tambuwal asked.
The governor also called for the reorientation of the herders “to bring them back to the track of modernism and development.”
Ahead of 2023 election, Tambuwal said that the nation requires a leadership that is nationalistic and not tribalistic, a leadership that promotes national unity not disunity.
