From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Director-General Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, has claimed that the flag-off of the N6.25 billion ranch in Katsina is the beginning of the end of herders/farmers clash in the country.
Speaking with newsmen on Sunday in Abuja on the most important news event that trended last week, Okechukwu, argued that despite the celebration of Electronic Transmission of election results by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the vlag-off towered higher.
According to him; “For me, the flag-off of the N6.25 billion Katsina Ranch is the end-game for the incessant and controversial herders/farmers clashes in Nigeria and hence the foremost news of the week. I am surprised that most editors didn’t give it the prominence it deserved.”
Defending his stand further, Okechukwu reluctantly dished out a lengthy narrative of the uncountable harm the herders/farmers clashes did to dear fatherland.
He emphasised that it was because of the harms way posed by the clashes to Nigeria’s corporate existence that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the governors of the 36 states under the National Economic Council came up in 2018 with the blue print of National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), as a panacea.
“The Katsina Ranch is a poster boy of the National Livestock Transformation Plan, a good news and we need more urgently. I doubt if there is any farming community in Nigeria, especially in the Middle Belt that did not loose one person? What of Food Insecurity unleashed by herders/farmers clashes? And you talk of polarization of the country; methinks the clashes polarised our dear countrymen more than elections? It regrettably promoted our fault lines.”
“The truism is that the rise of separatist non-state actors like Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho is fueled by herders/farmers clashes. Their supporters are mostly victims of the clashes.”
“Even us the Buharists are at pains on how the Herders/Farmers clashes more or less blurred the unprecedented Buhari’s Agrarian Revolution and rendered irrelevant Mr President’s strides in physical infrastructure.”
“Please, am not saying that electronic transmission of results is not important, but we should not forget that democracy is in recession worldwide and going by local parlance, APC and PDP are the same coin,” he argued.