Ovie Adasaji
Soon as the bill before the Lagos State House of Assembly seeking to ban open grazing of cattle in the state becomes law, any herder caught with fire arms will be facing 21-year-prison term.
A threat to the peaceful coexistence in the state and country as a whole is how the Lagos state assembly members described the act of trespassing on people’s land by the cattle herdsmen, while unanimously condemning the incessant movement of cattle by herdsmen along some major roads during plenary on Monday.
The lawmakers agreed that food shortage has been an attendant effect of this open grazing, as according to them, the herdsmen are of the habit of moving their cattle into people’s farmlands and destroying their crops.
They also admitted that lives and properties worth millions of Naira have been lost as a result of incessant clashes between the herdsmen and farmers, stressing that placing a ban on open grazing was the only way to end such needless and senseless destruction of lives and properties.
Speaker of the House, Mudashiru Obasa, said the House was responding to the Southern Governors’ agreement to ban open grazing in all the 17 southern states after various state legislators have given it a legal backing, adding that there was need to identify herders operating in the state by registering them so as to know their total number.
Obasa equally advocated financial support for those who want to go into ranching, saying that there was need for training of the pastoralists in order to prepare them ahead of the new style.
The bill was later committed to the House Committee on Agriculture and Cooperative, while the speaker directed it to report back on Thursday.
