Explainer: What are grazing reserves?

Grazing reserves are areas set aside for the use of pastoralists and are intended to be the focus of livestock development in Africa’s most populous country.

It is similar to group ranches with clearly defined areas of rangeland to provide grazing for certain herds of livestock.

The initiative of a grazing reserve in Nigeria was first hatched in the 1950s after a study of the Fulani production system contained in the ‘Fulani’s Amenities Proposal.’

The proposal suggested the creation of grazing reserves, improvement of the Fulani welfare, and the transformation of herds’ management in the Northern region.

Few years after the proposal, the then Northern Nigeria Legislative Assembly in 1965 enacted the Grazing Reserve Law to provide legal grazing rights and land titles to pastoralists as a response to the increased pressure on traditional grazing lands by smallholder farmers in the region.

Under the grazing law, pastoralists are encouraged to settle within the reserves where feeds and water will be provided on a year-round basis, to enjoy access to veterinary and extension services as well as prevent or minimise incessant clashes between herders and farmers.

Before the enactment of the grazing law, pastoralists relied on the goodwill of farmers to occupy lands for their herds of cattle.

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According to Moses Awogbade, author of the article – Grazing Reserves in Nigeria, the Federal Government became directly involved in the establishment of grazing reserves during the second and third National Development Plans (1970-80).

He states that during the third development plan (1975-80) the Federal Government allocated N86 million for grazing reserves.

Under the National Livestock Development Project, six grazing reserves with a land area of 115,000ha were established in Kaduna, Borno, Bauchi, and Gongola.

As a result, the idea of having grazing reserves and giving pastoralists more secured tenure caught on in several states.

Today, Nigeria has 415 grazing reserve with 140 gazzeted and located in – Adamawa 31, Bauchi 27, Borno 15, Yobe 17, Taraba 9, Sokoto 8, Zamfara 6, Gombe 5, FCT 4, Jigawa, Kaduna, and Oyo have two each, while Kebbi, Kwara, and Plateau have one each.

However, most of the facilities within the reserves are no longer existing owing to neglect and desertification in the region, forcing pastoralists to migrate South in search of green fields for their herds of cattle.

“Most of the grazing fields in the Northern region have been taken over by dust as a result of climate change and this is what is causing the internal migration of herdsmen because of the lack of grass and water for their cattle,” Newton Jibunoh, founder, Fight Against Desert Encroachment (FADE), notes in an exclusive interview.

Currently, Nigeria has an estimated 21.1 million cattle, 38 million sheep, and 69 million goats, according to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.

The 21.1 million cattle, valued at N3.2 trillion at N150,000 per head, need about a billion gallons of water per day and 500 million kilograms of grass and forage crops daily.

The disappearance of these basic needs in the North is the major driving force for the continued southward migration, which is fuelling the farmers-herders crisis.

Owing to the incessant crisis between herders and farmers, there has been intense debate over the settlement of pastoralists that has assumed a wider dimension across the country.

The southern governors had in April placed a ban on open grazing in the South as a result of the conflict, thus urging for adoption of a ranching model in the country.

However, experts say ranching in the country must be driven by the private sector with the government just providing the enabling environment just as it is in other climes having modern animal husbandry.