‘We’ve Fulfilled Our Promise, Give Peace A Chance’

Your office was established by the present administration of Governor Aminu Bello Masari, what impact have you been able to make since coming on board?

Well, a lot of things have been done since the inception of this office, there are efforts made by the state government and also efforts by the federal government.

For the state government, where we take the sole responsibility of livestock management in the state in terms of giving care, improvement of breeds, the health status of animals, proving preventive measures for diseases and outlook for the animals’ diseases from human to the animals as well as from animals to the humans, which may cause the zoonotic diseases.

We are also into the consumption of safe meat, consumption of healthy milk, taking charge of private veterinary practices in terms of business, and fake and genuine drugs. All these are part of our departmental roles in the state.

So, let me tell you some of the efforts we have made.  We have embarked on vaccination programmes across the state, where we vaccinated our animals against CBPP which is contagious flu pneumonia, and equally vaccinated animals on PPR test remnants.

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We also vaccinated dogs for rabies disease, local chickens were also vaccinated for new coastal diseases among other infections. That’s what we have been doing for the whole year and we are doing all that as control measures against any outbreak of diseases.

Generally, if there is an outbreak of disease, we quickly intervene through the local governments, by having a ring of vaccination or treatment of all animals and provide any other necessary advice needed to prevent it.

Recently, we had an outbreak of bird flu which is even influenza. If not for our effort in the efficient management of the situation, it could have escalated to all parts of the state but we were able to control it. Though we lost over 200,000 birds to this influenza, we were able to manage and control the disease from spreading.

On the other hand, we are into livestock management, in terms of giving support to animal feeds such as wheat opal, brands and groundnut cake. We are also involved in drug revolving schemes, by ensuring the sale of genuine drugs at our veterinary clinics across the state, a 40-50 per cent price discount, in which we must ensure they are healthy.

We were able to enact some laws that would guide our operations for a long period, we also have some new laws, like mid-inspection laws, stock groups laws and other things. So there are a lot of things as I mentioned we have done.

Most of our veterinary clinics were renovated; new ones are opened and provide equipment there. We have diagnostic centres with functional and equip departments.

We are also into the genetic improvement of animals, improving breeds in terms of meat quality, milk production and what have you. We have provided a sort of artificial insemination for some of our pastoralists, in which we have seen nearly 70-80 per cent of new breeds, and they are happy about it.

We are also in partnership with the Niger Republic, where we participate in a joint entry vaccination of our animals. There we have control over ensuring trans-human and bandits’ issues are solved.

There is ongoing speculation that the present state government has nothing tangible to show, what do you have to say concerning this?

I think anybody saying that is a selfish person because he is either not a pastoralist or he’s just an onlooker to livestock production, but I want him to tell us where we have failed. During the previous regime, we can take two to three years without vaccination. And you know that causes a lot of outbreak of diseases if vaccinations are not done. They have never involved themselves in drug-revolving skills, even if they do, maybe they did it during late Umaru Musa. Our veterinary clinics were then in disarray, but we have to rehabilitate most of the clinics and give them a befitting look. We even merged our abattoirs to have healthy meat in all the areas; we have put veterinary doctors to doing those kinds of things there. Let me ask, has the previous regime ever given support to pastoralists, but we did in the whole 34 local government areas. We’ve supported them with feeds, not once, not twice we’ve been supporting them freely. We did vaccination free of charge.

Tell us how your new established office was able to transform the Abattoir?

Well, you should have visited that Abattoir to see what we are talking about whether it has changed or not. Abattoir has been under renovations on both mechanical-electrical and other things. We try as much as possible to prevent a lot of issues concerning abattoirs.

First and foremost, most of these zoonotic diseases we are talking about always come from the abattoir because we eat unhealthy meat without inspection, either pre-inspection or post-inspection of the animals before they are slaughtered or after they were slaughtered. What I guarantee is, you know, when you allow free slaughtering, you are eating dead meat because of the source of that animal. You don’t even know whether they’re poisonous, poisoned by snakes or chemicals, whether it’s a rustled cattle stolen somewhere, or whether it is a sick animal that they are slaughtering. And maybe it’s almost on the verge of dying, they are slaughtered and you eat without knowing the problem, whether an animal that has been given drugs within two or three days, which is not healthy for people to consume the meat by the law and other things.

So that’s what we are saying, we did a lot of things that to regulate the practice and we are sure that things are improving every day. Even the abattoir at Gobarau, we have opened it again. We opened it because the local government system has taken over the control to put a veterinary doctor there, they try to make the place neat every day, and they put some uniforms on to butcher and do other things. That’s why we allow them to operate there.

Ranching has been one of the biggest projects the government has embarked on, what informed the decision of the government on that project?

You know, when you talk about ranching; a lot of issues come to play. What informed us about this programme is the issue of insecurity which has increased in the state. If you remember, when we came in 2015, we had a peace accord with bandits at Kankara Local Government Area. And that peace accord stayed for almost two, three years in the state without any banditry. And then later an incursion came from Zamfara area and part of Sokoto, they started infiltrating our bandits’ reform and then tried to influence them to continue the business.

The governor didn’t rest again; he took himself to the bandits’ hideouts. We went round 10 local government areas surrounded by the Rugu forest and bordering with Zamfara forest.

So, we went there ourselves and met them, the major thing they told us is why the crisis is for just two reasons.

They don’t know what the government is doing for them; there are no schools, no hospitals or other support from the government. They don’t enjoy anything from the government. That was the past government and this government because there were a lot of governments before we came on board. We therefore returned and sat around the table, deciding to look at how we would go about it. And His Excellency, the governor in his wisdom sees the need to create a department which will take that problem headlong, and created the livestock and grazing department.

Thereafter, we sat and made a budget of about N12.5 billion, but we cannot finance it because you know what is happening to the Federation accounts. We decided to write to the federal government for support in financing this N12 billion project so that we can solve these people’s problems. Luckily enough we were giving approval of 50 per cent of the amount which is about N6.25 billion, and if you remember, it came around April and May last year.

There, we have to start the process on the budget because we can’t spend a kobo without going into the State Assembly to make it a law. We then made a law around November. We made an advertisement for consultants which gave expertise on how to handle the banditry crisis and s, how to approach the bandits. And how do we understand their reactions when we get there? What they want, what they don’t want and among other things. We did advertisements in newspapers including your newspaper and about 17 consultants applied for jobs and we screened about five or six.

So, what we did is to divide the consultants into five components. Number one, we have project consultants who will be responsible for giving us advice on the whole project. After the planning of the project, we have to put in a design consultant that will design the buildings, infrastructures, post-challenging, feeder roads and stock routes. So we have to input another consultant who will do the costing, how much the cost of this project will cost, and then we have to put a consultant who will also give us the survey of the area. We have to survey the whole area, and it has to be done by the survey consultants.

After all that we have to go back and look at the actions, the environmental impact assessment of the needs and what they don’t want and the climatic damages it would cause on those issues. What are the complaints when we get it, maybe we will have an attack there or not. All those we have to sit and get consultants to handle that, and you know that is not easy if you are going to such an area you have to be also ready to risk your life because you have to negotiate on how to get this information. We have been doing this from January to March this year. Then by the end of the year, we also have to go to the state house of assembly to pass whatever is in the next year’s budget to pass it into law. So we have two budget proposals, we have a supplementary budget and that is for the end of the year. These are processes which are taking time within the ambit of the law. Again during that period we also have to be engaging the stakeholders, I first called all the stakeholders in all the 10 LGAs at Katsina where the Governor advised them. Who are the stakeholders, the district heads, the chairman, and all security agencies including vigilantes and hunter groups are the stakeholders in this meeting. We also called on all the pastoralists and farmers association; the Miyetti Allah and farmers including the civil society organisation are also part of the stakeholders so that it will be a partnership between the government and the owners of this project which are the local governments.

Secondly, part of the agreement is that I should go to each local government myself and do the same meeting by addressing all the issues there, I went round to the 12 LGAs, discussed with them and got a lot of advice from our consultants based on the work before us.

The first project I did was to give empowerment to the pastoralists, not only to the 10 local governments, we are talking of 34 local governments because most of those refugees from that area had to move to other local governments where they have relatives, they have peace of mind. So I have to follow all the 35 local governments to give them empowerment in terms of the wheat offer, cotton seed cake, salt leak, and other things amounting to about N600 million. So he provided us with the empowerment which we share through their associations, Miyetti Allah and the farmers association. We did that through their various associations. They are the ones that submitted the list of names as well as the sharing to the people that are affected. While we are engaging the stakeholders with other things before the consultants give us their final reports.

And by February, March and April, the consultants gave us the entering reports. One is the physical structures, the second is the development of pasture land and the third is the rehabilitation or construction of new dams. And then on our side, we should have another empowerment for the pastoralists, because when we are doing his physical structuring we should be giving them a soft landing that we are also around with some kind of support to capture their minds in between the pastoralists and communities around.

We were giving them some support to have peace of mind among the pastoralists and the community around them. So right now, we started doing number one which is the physical structures, because they are highly demanding. We put about 14 issues there. I will not mention all, but I will give you some of them. We plan to build a primary school in those locations, we plan to construct a human clinic. We plan to construct a veterinary clinic, we plan to put abattoirs where they can slaughter animals and have healthy meat, we plan to have an insemination centre, where the animals will breed with the new modern breed of Europe or local, which would either be through direct mating with booth or through artificial insemination, we plan to have resting points for pastoralist, this resting points, I mean are when they are coming for grazing and its rainy, they can have small hut about 10 each side where they can enter and rest whether in the sunny or cold season.

Also, we even plan to have milk collection centres in that area, they don’t have to go to hotels to create problems. There’s an uptake there who will take charge of milk, we will have an MoU with them on that.

So we plan to have potable water for them, boreholes powered by solar and other means, we plan to have drinking points for the animals when they come for grazing, we are spending  N305 million on this project in each local government. This one has been done by the consultants and we passed it through public procurement. Last week, we passed it to the state executive council and they approved it. That’s why we announced it.

When we have done that, we got the approval, now I ask His Excellency, you know, now it’s high time again to call these major stakeholders to inform them that our contractors are coming out to the field, we need their support in terms of security, in terms of cooperation, maintenance and in terms of protecting those things.

That’s why we had a stakeholders meeting, where the Deputy Governor came, where I represented him. We told them the level we are at and we are ready to come for the project. The beauty of the whole thing is in our department, we have never selected any site. It was selected by the stakeholders in that area. So we don’t have any biased judgment. If they say they want a primary school in that location, fine and good, if they say mosque in this place we say fine and good, we didn’t involve ourselves in the selections. It’s from them we plan.

How optimistic are you that this project will solve the lingering clashes between farmers and herders?

Well, I don’t need to be optimistic for you because I’ve been to that area and relate with them very well and they are eager about this project. I’m happy. This is my happiest moment. At least I implemented the project, with all the problems here and there; at last, we have done it systematically by the law. And now we are on the implementation of the project as they requested.

We have kept our promise by giving them the project, now it is for them to fulfil their promise. The first lot here, we are planning it only for fourteen weeks. There’s a contract agreement signed for two weeks in which we should complete the project, and before the fourteen weeks, that’s why we say, okay, let’s have the next lot of programs. And until we get done with this one, if we have a problem with it then we should change the project location from that local government to a local government closer to them where we are safe. We have to do it because there is no going back with this project, we will do it close to their domain. I’ve spent this money on this project to assist the pastoralists and farmers in those areas.

And what I want you to understand is that we are trying to achieve one or two things. We are trying to achieve is to stop this movement of herdsmen from the north to the south, which is now almost hostile to them; they erected so many laws concerning their movements. Even if they go there they will have a lot of problems. One of the things is they’re going there just to get grass to eat. But if they have some places where they can graze and avoid rules from where they are going. I think we have an understanding of maybe in some years; they’ll start to be settling down.

What is your experience working under Governor Aminu Bello Masari?

Well, I appreciate working under him, I always learn from him because he’s a very patient and persevering person, difficult to find fault with a fault. If you come close to him, you like him because I’ve never seen somebody so simple, accommodating, gentle and supportive like him. I have never asked anything in terms of development which he refused till today, that’s why we are moving forward.

What is your message to the pastoralist and farmers concerning the implementation of the ranching project?

My message is, that we came, and we conquered because we agreed to have peace. They have made their requests on what they wanted from us and we gave them. Now, the effect is to let them know to give us what we want and what we want is living in peace and harmony. We need peace in the state and the country at large. We want them to inculcate the culture into their religion, the religion’s origin means peace. So, we need that peace. That’s what we are asking from them.