Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, has declared that the State will not provide land for ranching as it believes it is a private business.
The governor made the declaration to clarify a tweet by him, which had been misinterpreted to be his support for the Rural Grazing Area, or RUGA policy.
He had, after a meeting with Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State, tweeted that: “We also agreed that the National Livestock Transformation Plan which is already being implemented in Kwara State would be implemented in Oyo State leading to further collaborations between both states on economy and security.”
Many Nigerians have voiced their opposition to the RUG policy, which the federal government advocated as one of the ways to end the herdsmen-farmers conflict.
The conflict has since ballooned into a national crisis, with many states in the south now accusing the herdsmen as the brains behind the rising incidence of kidnapping.
Oyo has experienced the catastrophic impact of the herdsmen menace, which led to the emergence of Sunday Igboho, who is championing the move to evict the herders from the South West region.
“My attention has been drawn to this tweet regarding the implementation of the National Livestock Transformation Plan during the joint security meeting, yesterday. For the avoidance of doubt, when I said we would implement the plan, I didn’t mean a wholesale implementation,” Makinde tweeted.
“We will be taking aspects which are beneficial for our state. As I have stated on several occasions, our position in Oyo State is that ranching is a private business and should be carried out as such. Our admin won’t be providing land for free to private investors for ranching,” he said.
