Senate refutes rumour on Grazing bill

Following rumours in the social media that the National Assembly was making effort to pass for a third reading a bill on for an Act to establish the National Grazing Reserve Commission that would ensure that lands are acquired across the country to settle Fulani herdsmen and their cattle at the expense of the Federal Government, the Senate has denied having such Bill in its custody.

Nigerians started showing their displeasure towards the alleged Bill which was rumoured as being deliberated upon by the Nigerian National Assembly. The media had quoted that the bill is titled: ‘An Act to Provide for the Establishment of the National Grazing Reserve (Establishment and Development) Commission for the Preservation and Control of National Grazing Reserves and Stock Routes and Other Matters Connected Therewith’. Although while Senate denied having anything to do with the Bill at the moment, it is said that the bill was first brought before the 7th assembly but was rejected by the former House of Representatives.

Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (Abia Central) had during the Senate Plenary on Tuesday moved a point of order to draw Senate attention to the matter which has been making rounds in both the print and the social media for the past two weeks. He told the Senate that he had been inundated with phone calls from concerned Nigerians as to the true position of the Bill which most commentators had criticized as not in the interest of Nigerians should it be passed into law. Abaribe called on the Senate through its Committee on Rules and Businesses to quickly address the matter so that the public does not get misled by its silence on such salient issue. In a swift reaction soon after the plenary, Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Businesses,

Senator Babajide Omoworare, in a press statement clarified that no such Bill has been presented by the Executive arm of Government and that none has so far been filed by any Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the 8th Senate. “For the avoidance of doubt, a National Grazing Reserve Establishment and Development Commission Bill (SB. 06) was presented by Senator Zaynab Kure (Niger Central) during the 7th Senate (2011/2015) which has now expired by the operations of law on the 6th June 2015 in furtherance of Section 64(1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended),” he stated.