By Peter Amine
Jos – The Chairman of the Northern States Governors’ Forum, Simon Lalong, says Northern states will learn and adopt cooperative model of Kenya Muranga County to boost their livestock production.
A statement issued by Dr Simon Macham, Director of Press to Gov. Lalong, on Wednesday in Jos said that Lalong was in Kenya on behalf of Northern governors on peer review visit.
Lalong made the disclosure at a meeting with Kenyan Council of Governors (KCOG) with visits to more Counties.
The governor during the engagement discussed issues around agriculture value chain addition and tackling poverty through the utilisation of cooperatives.
He said that Northern states governors were willing to learn from the County particularly as they continued to look for ways to adopt modern livestock production.
Lalong who was at Muranga County was received by the Governor, Mwangi Wa Iria, and members of his legislative body at the County office, said that his mission was to explore areas of collaboration for the countries.
He explained that the Northern part of Nigeria had similar characteristics with many counties in Kenya which are mostly agrarian and rely on food production for income and jobs.
The governor said that Muranga County was using the Cooperative model to empower households and creating value chain addition in agriculture especially animal husbandry.
He said that Plateau shared similar topography and weather with Muranga County and as such will be interested in forging closer relations that would yield positive results for the benefits of the citizens of both states.
“We need to learn from each other and see what works in one country and copy.
“We cannot be going to other parts of the world to look for African Solutions when we have our brothers with whom we share many things in common close to us.
“When I arrived here, I saw the mountainous nature of this
place and the kind of vegetation and crops that you cultivate here, I thought I was in my State of Plateau.
“The one thing I did not see is yam which we will soon introduce to you,” he said.
Gov. Mwangi Wa Iria informed Lalong that his County had continued to implement social programmes especially the ones that touched the very poor who really needed assistance.
Iria particularly cited the livestock programme which is tagged “One household, One Cow” in which families especially indigent ones were encouraged and assisted to raise cows.
The Muranga governor said that the cows were those that produced milk that was then purchased by the County’s Cooperative Society which had a diary processing factory that buys off from them for processing and value addition.
According to him, the model has created many jobs and has reduced to insignificant level any issue of conflict arising from livestock production as almost everybody is involved.
Iria further said that in addition, all their children were given free milk every day from the Cooperative Diary Factory, adding such had enhanced school enrollment.
He later took Lalong to the Diary Processing Factory where he was shown round the production chain and packaging.
