On Cattle Colony and Solutions: Open Letter to Gov Yahaya Bello | By Abdulsalam Ibrahim Amoto
The Executive Governor
Government House
Lokoja,
Kogi State.
Dear Sir,
ON CATTLE COLONY AND SOLUTIONS
Recently, there has been a raging debate ever since you made the pronouncement that Kogi State is interested in being among the host states for the proposed cattle colonies as announced by the Federal Government.
There are some out of genuine concerns who are against the proposal because of the ambiguity of the term colony, and there are some who are out to oppose any idea for no just cause.
Firstly, let me define what an animal colony is as used in the context in view:-
It means, a group of the same kind of animals living and breeding together.
So, cattle colony means a group of cattle living and breeding together. This is where I suggest that the government needs to step in and state clearly the modalities involved in establishing a colony.
I wish to appeal to the governor to call for a stakeholders meeting involving cattle breeders, farmers, environmentalists, Ministry of Agriculture etc, to deliberate on an action plan.
A department of parks and wildlife should run the colony and integrated with natural resource conservation and research facilities.
It shall be equipped with veterinary clinic which monitors and treats outbreak of diseases among the cattle and to ensure improvement in the quality of meat we consume. People die daily from poorly processed meat consumption.
The colony shall also have a centralized abattoir and cold storage facilities for meat processing and packaging with capacity to track the origin and grading of meat sold in the market. This will help reduce theft of cattle and introduce minimum standards in marketing and processing of meat. In addendum, a tanning facility should be included to process hides and skin.
Integrated with natural resource conservation, comes the task for improvement in bio-diversity, promotion of eco and photo tourism in the colony.
The colony will require appropriate skills in park ranging, veterinary medicine, environmental science, meat processing, marketing and sales etc. The colony when completed, can provide thousands of direct and indirect jobs for the youth in the state, and also boost the state’s internally generated revenue (IGR).
Estimated initial investment can run into hundreds of billions of Naira. The amount spent will be recouped by offering the space to those in cattle rearing business, farmers, financial institutions like banks, insurance companies etc.
I will be glad if all that have been stated above can be looked into and necessary adjustments/ improvements are made.
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