FG, REA Partner To Power Grazing Reserves

The national authorities has taken a large measurement towards modernising the livestock assemblage with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) betwixt the Ministry of Livestock Development and the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) to deploy renewable vigor successful grazing reserves and livestock clusters crossed the country.

Speaking astatine the signing ceremonial successful Abuja, the Minister of Livestock Development, Dr. Idi Mukhtar Maiha, described the statement arsenic a “pivotal measurement forward” nether the Renewed Hope Agenda, aimed astatine transforming pastoral communities and strengthening nutrient security.

“For excessively long, our farmers had been constrained by a deficiency of basal infrastructure. Today, we are not conscionable signing a document, we are ushering successful a caller epoch of sustainable development. By powering rehabilitated grazing reserves with star mini-grids, we are laying the instauration for peace, productivity, and prosperity successful agrarian communities,” the curate said.

Maiha disclosed that 4 aviator reserves Wawazengi successful Gombe, Wase successful Plateau, Gungush successful Adamawa, and Kawu successful Bwari Area Council had been earmarked for contiguous intervention.

He explained that the facilities would see veterinary clinics, superior schools, wellness centres, h2o systems, and interior roadworthy networks, each powered by renewable energy.

Permanent Secretary successful the ministry, Dr. Chinyere Ijeoma Akujobi, said the collaboration was important due to the fact that “everything revolves astir power.”

She emphasised that each planned interventions, from renewable villages to revamped grazing reserves, necessitate energy to succeed.

Managing Director of REA, Dr. Abba Aliyu Abubakar, hailed the concern arsenic a “marriage of convenience” that aligns with the agency’s mandate to electrify unserved and underserved communities.

He noted that the program, tagged E-HEART—energizing health, education, agriculture, agrarian development, and transportation—would integrate livestock improvement into broader agrarian electrification efforts.

“We privation to guarantee that wherever the ministry establishes grazing reserves, energy follows. When you harvester grazing reserves with schools, wellness centres, abattoirs, and markets, you make improvement clusters that renewable vigor tin unlock. That is wherefore this time is precise peculiar for us,” Abubakar said.

Executive Director of REA, Technical Services, Engr Umar A. Umar who besides spoke astatine the event, highlighted the agency’s way grounds successful deploying standardized star mini-grids crossed the country, stressing that the aforesaid planetary standards are being applied successful Nigeria to guarantee reliability and efficiency.

The initiative, Umar said, is expected to catalyze livestock productivity, amended agrarian livelihoods, foster peaceful coexistence betwixt herders and farmers, and make greenish jobs done the installation and attraction of renewable vigor infrastructure.

With implicit 400 grazing reserves nationwide astatine varying levels of abandonment, the ministry said the aviator projects would service arsenic a exemplary for scaling up crossed the state successful enactment with Nigeria’s nutrient information and climate-smart improvement goals.