Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, has expressed that the effective implementation of the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) would have prevented the current farmers-herdsmen crisis ravaging the country.
The governor stated this on Tuesday on the Sunrise Daily programme of Channels Television.
NLTP was proposed by Audu Ogbeh, former minister of agriculture, in 2018 and was adopted by the National Economic Council (NEC) headed by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.
Lalong stated that some states rejected the plan on the grounds that they do not have the land for it.
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“When we came and we realized that what was really very prevalent was the Boko Haram issue and farmers-herdsmen issue, the national livestock plan was introduced. But when we got to the period of implementation, there were a lot of problems here and there, even from some regions of the nation. Some who said they don’t want the national livestock plan because they don’t have the land,” he said.
“At that time, if the policy had been well implemented, today we would not have been talking about farmers-herdsmen crisis because that policy was well drafted.”
He also accused some leaders of working against the plan due to their believe that it is meant for an ethnic group.
“Now people don’t even care about reading it. By the time ranching and grazing is mentioned, people believe it belongs to a particular ethnic group. So we don’t even want to read what is contained in the policy to even talk about accepting it to be implemented in our various states. Now you can see the menace everywhere,” he said.