NIGERIA’S MINISTRY OF LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT: TINUBU AS PRESIDENT WHO SEES TOMORROW
By Gani Enahoro
There must be something or so many things that our President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR is seeing that is shrouded in obscurity for so many of his peers in politics. He must be on a mission, the path that the likes of those who changed their societies positively in history treaded on. No agent of change resigns to the status quo. They were always misunderstood by rich people and men of influence, who worked forcefully against and pilloried them. But for every time they were challenged, they became more resolute, and hungrier for what they do, digging deeper, and seeking what is new. They opt for how old things could be done in a new and more productive way. In the end and with their dogged consistency, they succeed and become heroes whether the initial antagonists eventually support them or not. Although they will never be free from the continuous bashing and opposition, history always remain in their favour. President Tinubu, truth be told has demonstrated an unusual courage, swimming against the ferocious tides, and has so far deployed the unusual political competence in dealing with the fallouts. He must be a special one that we need to pray for and it is looking like he could be leading Nigeria to the glory we candidly yearned for amongst the comity of nations.
When a leader plays to the gallery, a retinue of hangers-on would be ready with their samba dance. Such sycophants are never in short supply, whether it is a Presidential or parliamentary system in place. That is not what we want at these almost perilous times. I have always disagreed with the common saying that the type of leaders we get is a reflection of the quality of followers. It could really be vice versa, with the type of followers being determined by the quality of their leaders. During the Buhari/Idiagbon military regime in the early eighties, and the effective War against Indiscipline (WAI) of that era, we saw leaders who directed almost the entire society to the way they rightly or wrongly believed things should be done. On their positive side, orderliness was restored, and people queued in secret or public to take their turns in all matters, driving was with sanity on our roads, no one was bold enough to litter the streets with as little as a used tissue paper, no open urination on the streets for the fear of arrest, let alone the pitiable sights of open defecation for which we rank so highly in global reckoning today. Today, we see in Tinubu a driver with a good compass and so convinced in his destination, and we need to join in the bumpy journey for the sake of posterity.
Nigerians have suffered a lot and displayed an uncommon resilience to leadership deception and disappointments. It is therefore understandable why the huge trust deficit exists all around. We have seen all manners of rulership than has been published in the books authored by the ancient and modern theorists in social or political sciences. We have seen body language and winking from the corners of eyes as a tool of governance that did not yield for us much gains. There was a country as Chinua Achebe titled his book, with the military leader who busied more as evil genius, and whose governance style was to shop for civilian men of integrity to humiliate just to prove that everyone was corrupt and had a price. He lured men of valour who were role models, and were peculiar in how they dressed in khaki knickers and socialist-type hats, into wearing trousers and flowing agbada gowns. We have also had an obviously overwhelmed President, but gentle in nature and misrepresented as clueless, but whose “ambition was not worth shedding the blood of one Nigerian”. Those who eventually succeeded him became much worse off, and labeled Nigerians who couldn’t agree to their docility as wailers. It was Bob Marley of blessed memory, the musical legend from Jamaica that owned a band that was patented as “wailing wailers”. But our country’s presidential spokesman formally tagged us wailers. What have we not seen in this country, and who is the messiah yet unborn? So let us give this President the chance to keep doing bold and new things and support him to fruition. This country is ours, and we cannot continue doing things the regular and ordinary way, and be expecting to reap extraordinary outcomes.
Kudos must be given to President Tinubu for the fearlessness in creating a new Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy to maximize the aquatic gains for the benefit of our economy. Perhaps the announcement caught the political antagonists unawares and the hue and cry of a bloated bureaucracy that eventually followed the recent creation of the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development did not herald it. Then he did what was a panacea to the hunger in the land, and declared emergency on food security in July 2023 and everyone hailed him, without asking for his implementation strategies in details. I keep wondering if they expected that by the declaration of emergency, food would automatically continue to miraculously flood our houses? That would have been supernormal and impossible to achieve, and those who are campaigning against genetically modified foods today would have been busier, advising furiously against eating what was more from unknown origin. President Tinubu is obviously very deep and knows his onions, and no one was likely to derail his focus on the goals he wanted. In his foreign trips and at many fora locally, he challenged the veterinarians to get ready for an elevated engagement in dairy businesses, and ranching of animals. He invited all the numerous livestock stakeholders, including cattle breeders, butchers, organized meat users, the smallholder livestock farmers, the veterinary paraprofessionals, animal scientists, economists, environmentalists and community animal health workers to be ready for a good run. It was obvious he was warming up and preparing the fertile ground for a major decision in a sector that have not been developed at all and sitting on huge resources for local benefits and for exports.
For the discerning minds, it did not come as a surprise when the President again courageously created the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, for the benefits of the terrestrial equivalents of what the blue economy would readily offer Nigeria. The immediate response from the loud-mouthed opposition of anything good was to condemn the President and sermonized to him on the increasing cost of governance. This insensitivity to the operators of the livestock sector particularly the herders was partly the reason for the farmer-herder clashes that have brought so much hardship to the otherwise peaceful Nigeria that we grew up to know. When crop farmers are allocated fertilizers and given improved seedlings, assisted to till their lands, and huge cost paid for hiring aircraft to overfly cultivated fields to drive away quelea birds, no one raises eyebrows. These animals form part of our essential food chain, and have always been abandoned with very little attention given to them despite the estimated thirty-three trillions of Naira value chain possibilities that could raise our GDP with ease. The Federal Ministry of Livestock Development has come to stay and the President has carefully chosen a veteran field livestock sector practitioner to serve as the Honourable Minister of the new Ministry, Alhaji Idi Mukhtar Maiha. Nigerians will witness how huge the livestock sector will contribute to the GDP in due course.
If it has taken a President Tinubu to open our eyes into what so many of us had always dreamed, then he must be a political Nostradamus of some sorts, who sees tomorrow, and history would bear him out positively. Nigeria as at today still remains in the doldrums as far as food sufficiency is concerned, and livestock forms a critical cornerstone towards solving food insecurity. The mono economy of oil dependency since its discovery, that had subjugated all other sectors have not taken us out of the woods as a nation. Several other countries have been ahead in reaping so much from their livestock while we had left ours unstructured. Uganda christened its Ministry as Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries in a distinct recognition of what the terrestrial and aquatic potentials offer to their economy. The Republics of Sudan and also South Sudan, Mali, Somalia, Burkina Faso, Niger, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya just to mention a few around us, have distinct Ministries of Livestock and Fisheries or a larger umbrella of Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries. The Botswana Meat Commission and the Namibia Meat Board rakes in a lot of foreign exchange to their countries from exportation of foods of animal origin particularly meat to the United Kingdom and the European Union countries in almost a similar manner that our NNPCL does in crude sales for us, and they don’t have the numbers of livestock that we parade in Nigeria. So let us believe in the wisdom of President Tinubu in turning towards the blue ocean and now the livestock sector as the surest bet for us to diversify our economy truly beyond oil.
Written by Dr. Gani Enahoro, FCVSN, mni
