Insecurity, exchange rate, ‘multiple levies,’ among others, are hindering the progress of the beef business in Nigeria, writesIt was 4:05 pm on November 9, Alhaji Ali Mohammed, a cattle trader, just returned from Asri at a prayer ground within the Oluwanisola Cattle Market, also known as Kara Market, located around the Long Bridge area of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. He reclined on the wooden wall of a makeshift shelter seemingly gazing at some of his cows.
“The prices of cows have multiplied. I have been selling cows for over 20 years and it has not been this bad. The problem is affecting everybody in the market. By this time two years ago, the market was filled up with cows and customers willing to buy. The market was busy.
“When we lose N100,000 to illegal levy collectors, how are we supposed to recoup that loss if we don’t add it to the cost of the cows? If the government can stabilise the naira, we would be happy. Things are expensive now and it is affecting us and our families,” the market leader said. “We face a lot of problems but the most challenging one is the issue of insecurity in the North-East and the northern part of the country generally. Our cows are rustled and bandits don’t allow our cows to be conveyed to the South. Even if we have the money to travel, we are always afraid that we might not return alive. It is like sacrificing one’s life.
“We no longer travel through Adamawa and Taraba to move our cows to Akwa Ibom, Abia, and Rivers. We go through Kano, Abuja, and Okene because if we don’t, N300,000 would not be enough to settle the people who extort us. So, we prefer to pay an extra N100,000 as the cost of transportation,” he noted.
These is why the Nigeria nation have to work on its border ,as immigrants bandits terrorists pretending to be northerners passes thru our vast porous border to cause conflicts between famers and herders and the Nigeria herders are then blamed for crime carried out by immigrants