My last article on this column titled ‘Open Grazing: A failure of imagination’ generated many interesting comments. While majority of my commenters agreed with my opinion and provided further valuable insights, others saw it as ‘riding the wave’ of anti-Fulani sentiment. One of them went as far as equating my opinion and advocacy for the […]
A government official in Gombe State, north east Nigeria, recently lamented the dearth of veterinary doctors in the state. He said the state had only eight veterinary doctors and around a million farm animals. But the problem is not peculiar just to Gombe.
The Veterinary Council of Nigeria has 9,000 registered members, but only 3,500 are actively practising veterinarians. The rest are in different professions or no longer in the country. According to the council, Nigeria requires a minimum of five veterinarians per local government area for effective containment of disease outbreaks and monitoring. With 774 local government areas, this means Nigeria requires 3,870 veterinarians to work solely at that level. There aren’t enough in active practice even for this requirement.