By Starrys Obazei | March 17, 2023
starrys@ddnewsonline.com.
The naira scarcity has caused serious pain for many Nigerian businesses.
Poultry Association of Nigeria, PAN, narrating its own dwindling economy, said its members lost more than N30 billion worth of over 15 million crates of eggs due to the effect of naira scarcity in the country.
The national President of PAN, Sunday Onallo-Akpa, made this known on Friday in a statement in Abuja.
“The poultry farmers in the country have lost over 15 million crates of eggs being unsold and are damaged, the average loss to the poultry industry is in excess of over N30 billion,” he said.
Describing the poultry industry in Nigeria, he said it is one of the most consolidated sub-sectors of Nigerian agriculture contributing about 25 per cent of the Agricultural Gross Domestic Product and employing over 25 million Nigerians directly and indirectly.
He said the poultry industry had been a major employer of labour and a great source of financial empowerment and livelihood for many families, especially women and youths.
“The industry is completely private sector driven and worth over N3 trillion,” he said, adding that it had been able to contribute to the local domestication of investments in the country.”
Onallo-Akpa, however, warned that the poultry industry was on the verge of total collapse and extermination because of the negative and devastating consequences of the new currency policy implementation on the industry.
“The near absence of naira notes for Nigerians to make daily transactions have made businesses in the poultry industry more difficult.
“Eggs being a daily produce by poultry farmers since the first week of February 2023 till date have never been overtaken by 20% because of the near absence and lack of the naira notes to buy basic food items and other necessary proteins like eggs and chickens,” the PAN leader said.
He, therefore, called for urgent intervention by the Federal Government to save the industry from imminent collapse.
Onallo-Akpa also appealed to the Federal Government to mop up the eggs through the association for distribution to the most vulnerable old populations as part of the Social Investment Support to Nigeria.