It is no longer news that the Nigerian poultry industry is in the midst of a crisis which has forced a crippling glut that has knocked not a few farmers sideways. To all intents and purposes, it has been gored and bloodied by the sharp spear of the botched currency redesign policy that precipitated a cash crunch.  Recently, I couldn’t restrain my emotion when the scale of the situation hit me; the mélange of empathy and sympathy took hold of me entirely. Frankly, the grave development in the poultry industry is as personal to me as it is to any investor or player in the industry. The losses are just too colossal and the weight of the pain thereof too heavy to keep one calm. How can anyone stand the sight of putrefying eggs valued at millions being buried!  It’s already clear that it would never be the same for many given the scale of the losses. People are routinely counting their losses and of course losing valuable sleep. The crisis is coming on the back of other debilitating crises like the bird flu, insecurity and the resultant high cost of key input in feed production and the big one – the COVID-19 pandemic – which saw to the imposition of lockdown. According to pundits, the lockdown resulted to about 1.5 trillion naira in losses. Sadly, another pandemic is on the prowl as new strain of bird flu is spreading apace.

However, the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) has already put a figure on the current losses to about 30 billion naira. Not a few players were swathed by a huge blanket of loans needed to stay afloat before the rattling punch of the current crisis. Before now, a lot of the poultry farmers had been braving singularly difficult operating environment. Let me provide a brief context on the industry. It is a giant in the agricultural sector which contributes about 25% to the sector. Its value is put at 4.2 billion US dollars. According to the Commonwealth  Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Nigeria leads in the annual egg production in Africa while it occupies the second largest position in poultry population with 180 million of birds. About 85 million Nigerians are engaged in the subsector preponderantly in small to medium scale. In addition, it provides about 300Mt of meat and 650Mt of eggs annually. It means whatever happens to the subsector easily has a ripple effect on the agricultural sector and the economy as a whole.  FOR THE FULL STORY PLEASE READ THROUGH THIS LINK: Time To Save The Poultry Industry  – Independent Newspaper Nigeria