Nigeria’s poultry industry and the high rate of smuggling

The Nigeria poultry industry has suffered a huge loss over the years on account of high rate of smuggling and imported poultry products into the country, as well as the increase in the prices of key inputs.

Most of the bans placed on poultry products have not been effective and have made no real impact on actual foreign imports as majority of these products continue to find its way into the country.

This has made smuggling poultry products, especially chicken and turkey a big business for importers of these products.

Nigeria, Africa most populous nation needs more than one million metric tonnes of poultry products annually to meet local demand. Official figure shows that local farmers are only able to produce 300,000 metric tonnes, leaving a wide gap of more than 1.4 million metric tonnes.

With the wide gap between supply and demand, smugglers are encouraged by the inability of local suppliers to meet demand for these products.

According to experts, smuggling of poultry products persists because of the huge demand of chicken and turkey in the country and is not likely to stop until Nigeria is able to increase its local production capacity.

Experts noted that the country can only address the issue of smuggling when the governments deliberately provide land for poultry businesses and establish funding mechanism for the development of the poultry value chain.

Despite the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) strongly warning against the consumption of imported poultry products and threatening to take action against smugglers or dealers found with the banned products, these products have continued to find in the Nigerian market in high volumes.

Imported poultry products, especially chicken and turkey, have been identified as causative agent in non- communicable diseases (NCDs) and antibiotics resistance. Some of these health conditions include hypertension, kidney disease, and cancer, experts say.

Yet, Nigerians still prefers patronising imported chicken over locally produced ones as the prices are cheaper and are easily available.