The Director, Department of Animal Husbandry Services, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Winnie Lai-Solarin, said Nigeria has 415 grazing reserves in 21 states and 141 of them is gazetted.
Lai-Solarin further disclosed that of the 415 grazing reserves, Only Oyo (two reserves) and Ogun (one ungazetted reserve) have grazing reserves among the 17 states of Southern Nigeria; adding that 141 that are gazetted are about 2.7 million hectares of land.
All the grazing reserves cover 4,275,326 hectares of land, and the National Grazing Reserve Law is of 1965.
Recall that Senate spokesman, Dr. Ajibola Basiru (APC, Osun Central), said yesterday that there was no law on grazing routes in any part of Nigeria.
He said the law on grazing reserves, recognised as a state law in the 1999 constitution, actually criminalised open grazing.
Ajibola gave the clarification in a statement, titled: “No Law of Grazing Routes in Nigeria: Either North or South.”
He spoke as Pan-Yoruba Socio-Political Organisation, Afenifere, advised the Federal Government to jettison grazing routes, just as human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, criticised the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami, SAN, for allegedly misleading President Muhammadu Buhari on the existence of grazing routes in southern Nigeria.
Malami had in his reaction to the ban on open grazing by southern governors, said the ban was unconstitutional, adding that open grazing in Nigeria was backed by law and gazetted.
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