News Investigators/ A former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, says he will establish an Agency for Agricultural Transformation, if elected governor of Bauchi State in the 2027 election.
He said this at a media interactive session on Sunday in Bauchi.
Mr Tuggar on Saturday declared his interest to join the governorship race under the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC).
He said agriculture would be his top priority, to enhance food production, provide livelihoods, address unemployment and boost the state revenue base.
The gubernatorial hopeful said the agency would be designed to target people, who lost their lands and livelihoods due to impacts of climate change and farmer/herder clashes.
It would also provide support services through comprehensive agricultural programmes to farmers.
Mr Tuggar said that he would demystify the local government system through prompt release of their federal allocations, to fast-track successful implementation of the agricultural transformation, urban and rural development.
“I’ll make Bauchi State an agricultural hub in the country,” he said.
On livestock development, Mr Tuggar said his administration would promote understanding on pastoralism to make it more attractive.
According to Mr Tuggar, people need to understand that trans-human is a way of life and not incompatible with modern societies.
“We are trying to make people understand that cattle grazing, pastoralism is a way of life and is not incompatible with modern societies. You have pastoralists in the most advanced societies in the world, and so it is not a form of backwardness.
“We need to also modernise the methods and approach to pastoralism, to agriculture as a whole. We have something that exists; the grazing path.
“There is a need to modernise all those parts, and to gazette where they are not gazette, and also where there is encroachment find a way to address that problem because the issue of movement is a regional issue.
“It is how we subsist in West Africa, in the Sahel, in the wider region as a whole. The history of West African is a history of movement. There are places where if you don’t move you can’t survive. So we have to take that into consideration,” Tuggar said.
He highlighted that movement is a reasonable issue, adding that grazing lands and cattle routes would be modernised to address farmer/herder clashes and encourage productivity.
Tuggar announced plans to initiate viable programmes that would protect grazing areas, pasture, cattle routes, farmers and farmlands without disenfranchising anybody for sustainable agriculture and livestock development.
This, he said, would provide livelihoods, encourage productivity, reduce poverty and other nefarious activities.
To encourage mining, Tuggar said that if elected governor, he would encourage mining companies to obtain licences, to tackle illegal mining activities in the state.
He stressed the need for domestication of mining regulations at state levels, to standardise operations and boost productivity.
NAN
