CATTLE REARING IN NIGERIA:WHAT IS POSSIBLE?

If Uruguay, a country of 3.46m people with less than 177000 sq km, ranches 12m healthy cows that enjoy choice fodder, clean H2O  and veterinary care, why cant Nigeria with more than 920,000 sq km ranch hers as well? Why is it that Cattle rearing does not cause communal conflicts, human killings, stream pollution, farm crop destruction & sterile national debates in that not fully developed but orgnanised  nation? Uruguayan cows are so well cared for, with an ear device connected to a data bank for health & movement monitoring etc. You can infact request for the birth certificate of your beef at a restaurant. Here, our mostly lean  Nigerian cows trek 25km daily eating anything on their way, with no serious veterinary care  and as a result are too tired to produce milk . If you were a Nigerian cow having trekked several kilometers, you wont want to produce milk too.

 

Uruguayan cowboys are equipped with ranching and veterinary care methods while Nigerian herdsmen are armed with arrows & AK47 to protect cows! I ask myself-if you use AK47 to protect livestock, what will you use to protect Agbami, Oloibiri and Gulf of Guinea if you own them?

How did  3.5m Uruguayans get themselves leaders with potentials to earn $2.2bn from just cow milk, hides and beef only? This, been part of GDP, also helps to support free education from primary to tertiary level but Nigeria’s huge $405bn GDP in 2016 only led to the loss of 4m jobs the following year. (Source  World Bank 2016, NBS, 2017)

 

Which visionary leader will think beyond  blocs & rigs to show Nigeria beyond her 15m cows and prove to these herdsmen that some countries have 330m cows and they are not killing farmers. Which visionary leader will stop importation of 98% of the milk consumed in this country to generate milk from our own cows? London Economist should not start writing about a forthcoming “rise and fall” before grazing will be banned in Nigeria. Only Purposeful leadership will solve Nigeria’s problems and maximize the potentials of her energetic, ingenious but grossly untapped population. We need Leaders.