Federal Government Moves to End Open Grazing, Identifies 470 Gazetted Reserves

The Federal Government has identified 470 gazetted and legally protected grazing reserves across the country to rehabilitate and resettle pastoralists, signaling a major policy shift aimed at ending the era of cattle roaming the streets of major cities like Abuja and Lagos.

The Minister of Livestock Development, Idi Maiha, announced the development during a live interview on Arise News while outlining the implementation of the National Dairy Policy Framework. According to Maiha, shifting herders away from an unstructured, migratory lifestyle into designated reserves is a crucial step to modernizing the livestock sector, strengthening animal health management, improving livestock genetics, and bolstering disease surveillance.

To ensure the boundaries of these 470 reserves are strictly maintained, the federal government is introducing an automated tracking system:

• Boundary Alarms: Animals within the reserves will undergo a mandatory jaw-tagging procedure.
• Theft and Stray Mitigation: If an animal steps outside its designated perimeter boundary, an automated alarm is triggered immediately. This signals to administrators that the livestock has either strayed or been stolen, allowing security and tracking teams to intercept and return the animal swiftly.
• The Dairy Yield Gap: Offering structural context, Minister Maiha highlighted that Nigeria’s traditional cattle produce an average milk yield of just 1.2 to 2 liters per cow per day. In comparison, nations like Kenya, which have modernized their livestock genetics and feeding practices, achieve yields of up to 30 liters daily. Maiha lamented that despite boasting an estimated 270 million ruminants (including cattle, sheep, goats, and camels), Nigeria has failed to upgrade its traditional breeds, a stagnation the new reserve infrastructure aims to correct.