By Nurudeen Alimi
FOLLOWING the scarcity of naira in Nigeria birthed by the Federal Governnment currency redesign policy, a development which has brought untold hardship to citizens of the country, poultry business across the country has been said to be on the brink of collapse due to its fragile nature.
A major stakeholder in the Nigerian poultry industry and Chairman, Folhope Nigeria Limited, Chief Emmanuel Folorunsho Ogunnaike, while speaking with the Nigerian Tribune in his office in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital on Monday stated that the impact of cash scarcity on poultry business is enormous.
He noted that: “Poultry business is fragile in nature, any crisis, be it major or minor first set of people to be affected are poultry farmers. Most especially the egg producers, we have thousands of crate of eggs unsold as a result of non-availabilty of cash in circulation.
“Poultry farmers cannot feed their birds, we want government to intervene in this matter, otherwise, poultry farmers may be sent out of business if things continue the way they are at the moment.
“We are still trying to get over the negative impact COVID-19 had on our businesses, many of us are still paying the incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and this cash crunch came in. Government should please come to our rescue and do something before it is too late.”
While highlighting the negative impact the naira scarcity is having on poultry business, Ogunnaike stated that:”People could not get enough money to buy poultry items and we are producing perishable products such as eggs.
“After 21 days in stock, eggs are bound to become watery. As I have said earlier, it is perishable, so these are the negative effects. So when you could not sell eggs, you won’t be able to feed the birds and when you do not feed them, they will surely die.
“Unfortunately, many of us are taking bank loans to run this business. As I have said earlier, we are still strugling to come out of the injury sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic, now we are facing another problem which is naira scarcity.
“We are not saying government should not go into cashless policy, but they should have given us a very long time to prepare in such a way that people would have been used to the use of PoS, online and USSD transactions. The government ought to have enlightened the people on the use of this banking platforms because many people are not conversant with these alternative money transactions.”
Asked whether poultry farmers received any form of support from the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ogunnaike noted that:”I do not know of anybody who claimed to have received any financial support from any government authority. If there is, let them list the names of the beneficiaries, their address and location.”
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