livestock breeding |
Nigeria has been spending billions of naira on meat and milk
importation to complement its short fall demand since time immemorial without a
concrete steps taken to checkmate this abnormally despite our ability to structure
livestock policy on breeding to ensure maximum productivity.
This insensitivity to this aspect of Agricultural practice
in livestock apart from importation is also posing insecurity challenges to the
entire nation as the farmers and the herdsmen are on daily basis fighting and
killing themselves for the scarcity of food and water survival for these
animals.
No doubt the long time unpreparedness of Nigeria towards
animal feeds and water provision for livestock and husbandry is now taking its
toll on our long peaceful existence as none availability of proactive policy on
animal production, and general policy somersault in the entire agricultural
sector is something of great concern to us especial in this sub sector of
agriculture which does not spare breeding policy in the country.
The gap being created by lack of breeding policy is day by
day increasing as one of the limitations is limited numbers of animal scientist
breeders who are to give professional impetus to livestock in terms of improved
production but which reason not too far from no policy could not allow despite
the alarming increase in population that is demanding more meat and milk in the
face of scarcity.
The importance of effective breeding policy cannot be over emphasized
in the increasing productivity of the livestock in the country as the existence
of one would promote long term breeding strategies with conservation of the
indigenous livestock in the country.
There is no doubt that lack of breeding policy cum funding has been the reasoning for the dwindling
numbers of breeders in many of the research Institutes as nobody wants to take a carrier where there
is no proactive direction due to lack of policy.
We are aware of the call for disbundlement of National
Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) which many stakeholders in the sub
sector believed would create avenue for more funding as about six more Institutes
will be created for more specialized specification to productivity as this is another
resilience strategy to enhance the sector.
Also the recently organized retreat on livestock and dairy
development in the country pondered on many challenges confronting the sub sector
which has necessitated our great concern for the government to speedily respond
to having one in order to save the present and future predicament its none
availability might cause.
We are not doing ourselves any better by lagging in the
operational policy like the Ethiopia who has developed a livestock development
master plan to deliberately grow and reposition the sub sector because of its
economic potential which Nigeria can as well copy.
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