Nigeria had for several years been Africa’s largest economy. But even in that advantageous position, its livestock industry never excelled on the Dark Continent.

At the moment, Nigeria just manages to keep its sixth position in Africa’s bustling livestock industry.

Ethiopia tops the list with 70 million cattle while Nigeria is a distant sixth with just 58 million cattle.

Such insignificant economies as Sudan and Kenya are listed above Nigeria in the continent’s livestock sector rating.

Nigeria’s livestock industry is deep in distress. The distress ranges from poor veterinary services to inadequate fodders for the cattle. Nigerian cattle are rarely given adequate veterinary care. Worst still, they are poorly fed.

The poor feeding emanates from decades of tactical blunders rooted in primitive culture of leading cattle through several kilometers of trekking in search for fodders.

When the fodders are found after a long journey on foot, it is in low quantity and lacks the appropriate nutrition needed to keep the cattle healthy.

That probably explains why Nigerian cattle toil to yield a mere two litres of milk per day when an average Kenyan cow produces 20 litres per day.

That also is the reason Nigeria spends $1.5 billion annually on milk imports as it only manages to produce 700, 000 metric tonnes of milk in a year while it consumes 1.5 million metric tons.

Nigeria equally spends billions of dollars annually on other livestock products imports as its livestock industry cannot cope with the country’s voluptuous consumption of livestock products.

The long trek in search of fodders is at the root of the raging undeclared war between crop farmers and herdsmen. The herdsmen in apparent frustration after agonising search for fodders would deliberately lead their cattle into crop farms that farmers toil to cultivate with cutlasses and hoes.

When the farmers respond by tackling the invading cattle, the herdsmen raid their villages at night with AK-47 rifles and slaughter anyone in sight.

That development is largely responsible for the catastrophic supply deficit that catapulted food inflation to 39 per cent in 2024. 

In fact, many economy watchers see the launching of the National Council on Livestock Development (NCLD) as the right concept for tackling the country’s food supply deficit and consequently the spiraling food inflation.

Nigeria has lost thousands of farmers in the last 10 years to the well armed herdsmen. Besides the thousands of lives lost to the herdsmen raids on farmer’s villages, property worth billions of naira have been lost in the arson that follows the herdsmen’s cruel acts.

Successive governments at the centre in Nigeria had either treated the calamity with levity or watched it helplessly as they ran out of ideas on how to tackle the crisis.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may be the first Nigerian ruler to take on the crisis in a frontal assault. After watching the scene for two years as the bloodletting continued unabated, Tinubu took the bull by the horn by launching the NCLD.

The launching of the programme has drawn sighs of relief from farmers who were tormented for decades by cruel herdsmen who turned their farms into fodders for their cattle. 

Even some hard chore critics of Tinubu have commended the president’s gesture as the most ambitious strategy at addressing the underdevelopment in the country’s livestock industry.

The launching of the NCLD will unleash sweeping reforms that will attract billions of dollars of investment into the nation’s livestock industry.

Under the National Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy (NLGAS), the federal government is pursuing a plan to grow the livestock industry from $32 billion to $75 billion within five years. That will boost Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Consequently, the federal government is in advanced talks with multinationals and indigenous companies in the livestock industry for the development of the industry.

Government is negotiating with Arla, Nestle, Danone, Promasidor, FieslandCampina WAMCO, Integrated Dairies, and L&Z Farms among others. With the multinational and indigenous companies getting involved in the development of the nation’s livestock industry, the days of leading cattle through several kilometers of trekking in search for fodders will soon be over.

The federal government has commissioned its Wa1se Livestock Village as a model for the planned upgrading of 417 national grazing reserves into modern ranch-based livestock settlements equipped with schools, clinics, water systems, pasture fields and processing hubs.

The development of ranches will provide feeding grounds for the cattle and end the long treks in search for fodders. That in turn will end the conflict between crop farmers and herdsmen as the herdsmen will no longer need to lead their cattle into farms in search of food.

The involvement of the multinationals in the development of the livestock industry is the best way out of the crisis. Some of the multinationals have already invested heavily in the development of ranches and other livestock infrastructure like veterinary services and fodder facilities.

WAMCO, a Nigerian subsidiary of FrieslandCampina of the Netherlands which produces Peak milk in Nigeria, operates a research facility in Oyo State which produces cow milk at international standard that demystifies Nigeria’s miserable cow milk production.

When the company and other multinationals attracted by NCLD’s new unified policy direction take a plunge into the nation’s livestock industry, Nigeria will ultimately join the prestigious league of milk and other livestock products exporters.

One advantage that will emerge from the involvement of the multinationals in livestock industry development is the immediate end to the wasteful misadventure of transporting 28 cows in an articulated truck from the north to the markets in the south at the ridiculous cost of N3 million (N107, 140 per cow).

The new companies investing in the industry are expected to slaughter the cows at the ranch and transport the meat in refrigerated trucks to the markets in the south.

Each refrigerated truck is expected to freight the meat of 200 cows. That will drastically reduce the cost of transporting live cows at inflated rates factored into the cost of each cow. 

Both herders and consumers will gain from the transportation of meats in refrigerated trucks to the markets.