Nigeria’s 19 northern governors have asked President Muhammadu Buhari to speed up the national livestock programme.

In a communiqué signed by the chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, Simon Lalong, after their meeting in Kaduna on Monday, the governors said the programme would serve as a springboard in transiting from open grazing widely practised in the North.

“The forum also calls the federal government to expedite action on the well-established National Livestock Transformation Programme as a springboard in transiting from the open grazing system as widely practised in the North,” the communiqué stated.

In 2019, Mr Buhari’s regime introduced a 10-year National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) to end the open grazing and farmers-herders crisis.

The programme, expected to run from 2019 to 2028, is part of the federal government’s collaborative projects with states under the auspices of the National Economic Council.

The projects will be jointly executed by the federal and state governments, farmers, pastoralists, and private investors.

Nasarawa said it had started the programme.