The newly created Federal Ministry of Livestock Development by President Bola Tinubu is causing anger among officials of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS), NewsNGR can authoritatively report.
Findings by NewsNGR on Wednesday revealed that many top officials of the ministry are not happy with the move by the president to create what they describe as a parallel ministry.
Recall that the president had on Tuesday in a bid to address the long-standing farmers-herders crisis and boost Nigeria’s livestock sector, announced the creation of the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development.
Tinubu said the ministry was tasked with proposing recommendations to foster peaceful coexistence between herders and farmers while ensuring the security and economic well-being of all Nigerians.
However, a top official in the ministry told NewsNGR that the president was wrong in creating the livestock ministry when the government was planning to implement the Stephen Oronsaye report on reduction in the cost of governance.
Recall in February 2024, the president constituted a 23-man committee to study the proposed restructuring of Federal Government agencies in line with the report.
President Bola Tinubu had ordered the full implementation of the report, which recommended streamlining government agencies, scraping some agencies and merging those with similar mandates to control the cost of government.
However, the senior agriculture ministry official questioned the thinking behind creating the new ministry since the cost of governance had been rising over the years.
The official argued that rather than create another ministry of livestock whose mandate appears to be a duplication of the current agriculture ministry, the federal government ought to have strengthened the ministry of agriculture to discharge its role in line with the president’s vision for livestock development.
The official said, “The irony of this development is if the president wants to use the Orasonye report to merge ministries, reduce the size of governance, expenses and manpower, then creating another ministry will be difficult to understand this government.
“Creating new ministries means creating more structure, funds, and duplication of work with more cost of governance. This does not aid development.”
Speaking further the official told NewsNGR that the new ministry was created on existing implementation policies driven under the animal husbandry department of the FMAFS.
According to the source, “Nigeria does not lack policies or reforms to drive the economy further. This new ministry was created with the earlier policies of National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) 2019-2028, the Rural Grazing Area Scheme (RUGA) now Livestock Intervention Programme (LIP), among others. So, nothing is new.”