FG’s ranching push reopens RUGA wounds

•Stakeholders divided over new livestock plan
From Okwe Obi , Abuja
Ranching is a sensitive topic in Nigeria and that is why the federal government’s latest push to establish estate-based livestock ranches across the country is stirring fresh controversy.
For many stakeholders, the new drive brings back the echoes of the controversial Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) programme, a fiercely rejected initiative many saw as a hooded attempt to snatch ancestral lands from Nigerians and hand them over to pastoralists, who are mainly the Fulani ethnic stock.
No amount of sensitisation worked, forcing the initiative to be rested.
Nonetheless, the new ranching idea, springing up years after ...