Budget: Can N60m save Nasarawa grazing reserves?

State Commissioner for Agriculture Danladi Madaki said he had no records to make informed comments, when Daily Trust called him to comment on findings that showed that the ministry intends to repeat certain projects captured in last year’s budget but could not be executed such as the cattle market, vaccination, as well as procurement of […]

State Commissioner for Agriculture Danladi Madaki said he had no records to make informed comments, when Daily Trust called him to comment on findings that showed that the ministry intends to repeat certain projects captured in last year’s budget but could not be executed such as the cattle market, vaccination, as well as procurement of potash (kanwa in Hausa) which cattle leak.
In Nasarawa State, annual budgets for grazers are hardly implemented, checks by Daily Trust at the Department of Livestock and Veterinary Services of the state ministry, revealed.
In 2012, the state budgeted N260 million for grazers, but only N17.4 million was released. The 2013 budget had N230 million for grazing development, and all four quarters of the year, the ministry only planned to flag off a vaccination programme for grazers, as well as to procure Kanwa for cattle leak, without implementation.
Governor Al-Makura’s budget speech for the current fiscal year gave the budget performance of last year, showing that N59,046,807,565.49 only was realized out of the N110,146,672,672.00 estimated. This represents 53.61 percent accruals to the state coffers, in what saw most sectors including agriculture suffering under poor budgetary performance.
The development further worsened the already bleak future for grazers in the state, and by implication, presents a difficult situation in the management of the incessant crises between pastoral farmers and nomads because of the continuous abandonment of the grazing reserves project started decades ago.
Yearly budgets failed to maintain reserves in the state, as well as made further provisions, just as cases of encroachment have set in with farmers taking up the reserves for the cultivation of their crops. Much of the reserves have also been taken up by traditional rulers, and sold out for crop farming.
Daily Trust findings at the ministry show that Nasarawa has seven grazing fields, with two of them still at proposal stage, while five are in existence. Records obtained from the Livestock and Veterinary department of the ministry show that the state inherited two grazing reserves from the old Plateau after state creation in 1996. The two reserves, Awe and Keana, were established in 1979 by a World Bank intervention programme called ‘Lafia Agricultural Development Project’ (LADP) that ran from 1979 to 1983. The other three are Doma, Wamba, and Kurudu.
In Awe, two earth dams and a ring well were constructed near Baure, at one end of the reserve, while another earth dam was constructed near Anfana, at the other end, according to ministry’s documents. “Some access roads were constructed across the reserve while a veterinary clinic was built at Awe,” said the document which also said that the Awe reserve was gazette in 1992 by the then Fidelis Tapgun administration in the old Plateau State.
The LADP intervention constructed a dam near Gidan Ogere and a ring well near the western end of the Keana reserve. A veterinary clinic was built near the edge of the reserve, according to the document which says the reserve was also gazette alongside that of Awe in 1992.
Between 1997 and 2000, the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) in its Pastoralist Development Program (PDP) intervention under General Sani Abacha, undertook to rehabilitate the reserves and stock the routes. The programme also initiated services to enhance availability of veterinary services and drugs to reduce mortality and increase livestock production, as well as minimize grazers and crop farmers’ clashes over grazing fields.
In 1997, about 700 kilometers of stock routes; 65.7 for Awe and 84.25 for Keana were traced and gazetted by the PTF. “The actual infrastructural development in the reserves did not take place up till when the PTF programme was disbanded in October 2000 by the then Obsasnjo administration,” the document said.
In 2000, another intervention programme set in to develop the reserves. The National Livestock Project Division (NLPD) picked up some work in Awe and arranged to complete the development plan on the reserve. The state and Awe Local Government contributed funds to pay up a counterpart fund of N150 million and N75 million each, for a development plan which report was submitted in 2005, according to the ministry’s records.
Between July, 2007 and July 2008, the federal government executed a number of projects in its implementation of the report. These are the provision of three boreholes in Doma, one each in Awe, Keana and Wamba and three others in Kurudu. Requests from the state government were made of the NLPD to provide more facilities to the reserves, but nothing so far has come their way after the 2007-2008 periods.
But all the provisions made in the reserves are now dysfunctional, according to further inquiries by Daily Trust. The boreholes have all stopped working, as the dam in Keana has silted up, while the veterinary clinics have now become sick themselves, and are being taken up by either development or farming because of activities of land poachers, forcing nomads to look elsewhere for grazing.
Ardo Ahmadu Muhammadu, who has lived on one of the neglected reserves in Keana for over a decade now, cried out over the encroachment by farmers, lamenting that successive governments including the present administration of Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura overlooked their development.
“We are appealing to the government to ask farmers who are encroaching into this reserve to vacate because the encroachment is eating deep into this reserve,” Ardo Ahmadu said.
Like Ardo Ahmadu, Ardo Alhaji Yaro Mainasarawa who oversees Rugan Alhaji Yaro, some distance away from Rugan Ahmadu, said herdsmen have been slapped with taxes from different directions by the same government which would not look their way in their time of need.
“We are gradually facing a situation where we will not have any place for our cattle to graze because the reserve is eaten up by farmers’ encroachment,” Ardo Alhaji Yaro, said. This is just as they said government does not provide veterinary services.
State secretary of Miyetti Allah, a Fulani socio-cultural organization, Mohammed Hussain, told Daily Trust that Nasarawa State has only paid lip service to the development of the sub-sector.