Nigeria: Ram prices hit rooftop as Sallah nears

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As the Eid-el Kabir celebration nears, prices of rams, the animal used for sacrifice during the annual festival, have reached rooftop, making difficult for Nigerians to buy to celebrate the event.

Like ram, prices of cow and camel have also skyrocketed.

The hike in the cost of basic commodities in Nigeria has reflected itself boldly in the livestock sector, a situation that is likely to deny average Muslims the yearly sacrifice.

A survey of prices of the animals showed that the situations are the same nationwide, including Abuja, Kano, Yobe, Jigawa, Katsina, Lagos, and Port Harcourt, where prices showed that the cost of rams currently hover between N150,000 and N1 million, depending on the size and the location one is buying from.

The situation is generally blamed on insecurity in major the North West and North East, where the animals are reared; devaluation of the naira as well as withdrawal of fuel subsidy, which affected the price of animal feeds and the cost of transportation.

There is low sales noticeable in Abuja main livestock market located in the Dei-Dei area in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.

This is a sharp contrast with the past when the market served as a rallying point for suppliers and off-takers well ahead of the Sallah festivity.

Most sellers interviewed believed this was caused by the general inflation in the country and because the price of ram has either tripled or doubled when compared with how it went last year.

The increase in prices has not spared animal feed and cost of transportation, a seller, Mallam Yaro volunteered.

A trader, Abubakar Yelwa, said the smallest animal that attained the level of sacrifice currently sold between N120,000 and N150,000.

According to him, such rams were sold between N70,000 and N100,000 last year, adding that a middle-sized ram, which sold between N150,000 and N180,000 last year now costs between N250,000 and N300,000.

These are besides what can be called jumbo-sized rams, which cost from N800,000 and N1.4 million, which sold last year, at the rate of N500,000, while the biggest of all, sold at N1.1 million last year.

A breakdown of the commodity in the market indicates that a bag of animals’ feed extracted from raw beans is now sold between N13,000 and N14,000 per bag, depending on product quality and location. This is in contrast to the N7,000 to N8,000 sold last year.

Same goes to the dried groundnut leaves, which are currently sold at between N5,000 and N6,000, compared to previous year, when it was sold at between N3,500 and N4,000.

For the harvested corn by-product, its bag costs between N6,000 and N7,000, compared to the previous price of N4,000 and N4,500.

A bag of grounded maize by-product, or dusa in Hausa, is sold at between N18,000 and N20,000, compared to its previous price of N9,000 to N10,000 last year.

In the transportation sector, the traders said a canter truck supplying rams from Katsina or Kano that they paid between N200,000 and N250,000 last year, now goes for between N400,000 to N500,000.

Same truck transporting the animals from either Adamawa or Yobe states in the North East costs around N700,000, in contrast to between N400,000 and N500,000 paid in the past.

Transporting rams in trailer trucks from Mubi, in Adamawa State, a town neighbouring Cameroon Republic, now costs up to N1.5 million, as against last year’s N800,000.