The Poultry Farmers Association of Nigeria (PAN), Kano Wing, yesterday, raised an alarm over the non-payment of compensation to farmers affected during the last two avian flu influenza attacks, where over one million birds were killed and over 254 farms depopulated.
Speaking in Kano on behalf of the association on the financial threats faced by poultry business in the state, the assistant secretary, Umar Usman Kibiya, said that poultry farmers were facing a great threat of extinction from the business as most of their farms were closed due to their inability to replace killed birds. He said that during the 2015 bird flu attack, 179 farms were depopulated out of which only 116 were compensated.
He stated that during the recent attack in the state, over 300,000 birds were killed and over 181 firms depopulated with no farm receiving any form of compensation. Kibiya said that most of these farms were now out of business and people rendered jobless.
“The irony is that after the closure of these farms, many of our members were expecting compensation as promised by the federal government,” he said. “But for 8 months now, they have not received a single penny as promised to them during depopulation of their farms. Moreover, with the government’s policy shift to agriculture, it is apparent that the policy wouldn’t be realistic if poultry farming is neglected through non-payment of compensation to affected farmers. Moreover, the cost of production in poultry farming has gone higher and the price of the end produce in poultry farming has crashed.”
