A bill for an establishment Act of a National Livestock Bureau in Nigeria has passed second reading in the Senate
The controversial bill was sponsored by Senator Muhammad Bima Enagi (Niger South – APC).
At its Plenary on Tuesday, Senator Enagi, said the bureau would be created for the purpose of livestock identification, traceability, registration, cattle rustling control, disease control, and other related matters.
He went further to say; “Livestock identification refers to keeping records of individual farm animals or groups of farm animals so that they can be more easily tracked from their birth, through the marketing chain, to the table.”
About five senators from the North spoke in favour of the bill while their southern counterparts kept mum except Senator Bashir Ajibola (Osun Central APC) who raised a constitutional concern.
In his submission, Senator Ajibola noted that no part of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended gave the upper legislative body power to legislate on livestock.
His submission was overruled by the Senate president, Ahmad Lawan (Yobe North, APC) who is in total support of the bill.
He said: “I believe that in this Senate, we even had a resolution or intervention that was based on the Doctrine of necessity, because there was need for the National Assembly to intervene even when it was clear that there was no provision for such a situation.
“Sitting here, I believe that we will be doing this country good, we will be doing justice and a great deal of service to our people that we legislate on this. The identification is just one side of it, but the protection and management of this sector of our economy that is so huge and massive is critical to our economy…It is not something that we will leave to the states to do whatever they want to do. Let the states also try to legislate to compliment whatever the National Assembly will do.
“So, based on Standing Order 25(h) which gives me the authority to interpret both our standing orders – the rules and constitutional point of orders – I rule that this Senate and, indeed, the National Assembly has the legislative competence to legislate on this matter”.
The bill was passed for a second reading and referred to the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development to report back within four weeks.