By Muyiwa Adeyemi
Foremost Public Administration scholar, Prof. Ladipo Adamolekun, has criticised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for creating the Ministry of Livestock Development.

According to him, the creation of the ministry was against, “the June 2018 consensus within the National Economic Council (NEC) on ranching through a National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), which was an echo of previous ranching initiatives by two regional governments in the 1950s and 1960s.”

He declared that it is not the responsibility of the Federal Government to dabble into livestock business.

“The FG cannot and should not be expected to fund ranches across the states in the federation. This will be antithetical to the devolved federation that many of the same governors are clamouring for. FG owns no lands on which to establish ranches; its role in livestock farming can only be supportive of states’ initiatives,” Adamolekun.

He recalled that between 1950s and 1960s there was a Western Nigeria Livestock Company, comprising about 11 Ranches and the Northern Nigeria Rural Grazing Area Law (1965), which had no Federal Government involvement whatsoever. He added: “Against this backdrop, states that continue to evoke the NLTP ought to know that the primary responsibility for its implementation is theirs.

“Notwithstanding the ambitious programmes and projects that might be contained in NLTPS, the initiative for implementing ranching lies with individual state governments and that’s how it should be.”