Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom has commended the Northern Governors’ Forum for accepting to support and encourage ranching instead of open grazing of cattle.
Speaking Thursday in Abuja, he said ranching remains the only solution to the intractable crisis between herders and farmers in the country.
He said when his government enacted the law prohibiting open grazing, he was called names and castigated by those who did not mean well for Nigeria.
Ortom said the decision by northern governors to encourage the same ranching they had opposed vehemently has vindicated him.
“In 2016, when we discovered there were issues between herdsmen and farmers, we came out and took the bull by the horns because we had researched and discovered that globally the best method of animal husbandry is through ranching.
“So we came out with a policy. We didn’t stop at policy level. We went ahead, legislated and enacted a law prohibiting open grazing of cattle. We were called names. We were castigated by all manners of people who didn’t love this country, who didn’t care about the unity of this country, who didn’t care about how fellow human beings were maimed and killed,” he said.
