With just a week to Eid-el Kabir, prices of rams and other animals have gone up at the Nguru town’s livestock market.
An investigation by Kanem Trust at the market showed that many buyers have resorted to buying goats and sheep, which are a little bit cheaper for the sacrifice.
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Nguru ram market is popular as dealers from as far away as Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu, Kaduna and Abuja come to buy in large numbers.
One of the dealers, who simply gave his name as Jibrin, said the prices of the animals had gone high compared to what was obtained last year.
He said the price now ranged from N50, 000 for the small ones to N100,000 for the big ones.
“The situation got worse in the last few days when a ram, which was being sold for N25,000 now sells for about N50,000,’’ he said.
He said the only consolation they got was that the cost of transportation had come down by about 50 percent.
“This year, we got a lot of discounts in transportation compared to last year. We used to pay between 450, 000 to N500, 000 for transporting our animals to the South West but this time we pay between N250,000 and N300,000 for a truck.’’
Malam Garba, who is the chairman of the livestock traders association in the market attributed the hike in the prices to the high cost of animal feeds.
However, some buyers are attributing the rise in prices to hoarding.
According to one Dayyabu, who went there to buy ram, many people had gone to the market days ago and bought off the rams with the intention of selling at high rate, especially to civil servants who would be paid salaries later this week
Also, one Malam Isiyaku, a wholesale trader attributed the high cost to high cost of feeds.
“Many people cannot afford to keep animals for a longer period, particularly ram, because of the high cost of their foods, so a lot of ram breeders have to sell their rams earlier and this created scarcity of ram in the market. There are too many buyers on the ground at the same time” he said.
