Daniel Ukpera holding the ropes, left, and Catherine Hembadoon Agbo

By Catherine Hembadoon Agbo

I usually sit out needless controversial issues but you see this goat tether issue, it hits close home. The problem is real and what the donor has done is to proffer practical solutions.

You can afford to say this because you do not understand the gesture in its proper context. I don’t know what’s funny about this or why this gesture by a private citizen is attracting all this criticism. Different societies have their peculiar challenges. 

In Benue, which is largely agrarian, communities have been razed and lives lost because stray goats ate up crops on a persons farm. The problem is real and if you’re in rural Benue around the farming season, you’d usually hear announcements in churches admonishing people to tether their goats so that they don’t stray and eat people’s crops and cause fights.

That is the problem the man is trying to solve with this donation to goat herders, foolish as it looks in the eyes of those who consider themselves wise. It may be just tethers but it is passing a message and solving a real problem. You may think these ropes are cheap but they’re not and some people cannot genuinely afford them or are not responsible enough to get them and tether their goats. Now, they have no excuse. 

Even the wheelbarrows the governor was scorned for sometime back remain very useful to those they were given to.

Development is finding solutions to problems. Has a problem been identified and solved? Oh yes!

-Catherine Hembadoon Agbo, a senior journalist, writes from Abuja