Nigeria, May 28 -- Everybody is saying today that that we must ban open grazing based on pastoralism and establish ranches for animal breeding. What people are not saying is how and over what period. Nigeria currently has about 20 million cattle, most of them in the hand of pastoralists spread throughout the country's land area. Nigeria does not produce enough livestock for its consumption, so we import significant quantities from neighbouring countries to meet the meat demand of the country. Despite increasing demand for meat and other livestock products, the sector has not been growing sufficiently fast over the past few decades to cope with the demands of a rapidly growing population.
The basic feature of Nigeria's livestock industry is...