Nigeria’s Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has signed the bill prohibiting open grazing in Lagos into law.
This comes barely a week after the Governor assented to the State Value Added Tax Bill, empowering the state to collect VAT.
Governor Sanwo-Olu’s assent to the bill also comes after some governors in the Southern part of Nigeria, including Ogun, Ondo, Akwa Ibom, and Rivers signed the same law prohibiting open grazing.
Members of the Lagos State House of Assembly passed the two bills on September 9 following unanimous votes by the lawmakers after they were read for the third time.
While open grazing has been prohibited in some states in the South, other states in the region are making effort to ensure the bill becomes a law.
This is in line with the resolution of the Nigerian Southern Governors Forum that member-states should enact or amend the anti-open grazing laws to align with the uniform template and aspiration of the governors.
In their latest meeting held on Thursday last week in Enugu, the governors reviewed the state of the nation and the progress of implementation of the decisions reached in previous sittings.
They commended the rate at which the states in the South were enacting the anti-open grazing laws and encouraged those yet to enact it to do so expeditiously.
The governors had also encouraged the full operationalisation of already agreed regional security outfits that would meet, share intelligence and collaborate to ensure the security of the region.