10th November, 2010
Ram sellers in Lagos said on Tuesday that it would be difficult for prices of ram to remain low during sallah because ram is synonymous with sallah.
They told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that transporters from the northern part of the country limited their trips to other parts of the country during the period hence the high cost of the animals .
According to Alhaji Usman Mohammed, Chairman, Livestock Dealers, Breweries, Iganmu, this is because the transporters also want to celebrate the festival with their families.
“What now happens is that the transporters hike fares by between 30 to 50 percent per trip to make up for the period they will be at home.
“As Sallah celebration draws nearer, it will be better for any celebrant to buy ram because the price will surely go up a day or two days to the celebration,†Mohammed said.
The Vice-Chairman, Arase-Oluwa Ram Association, Oyingbo, Mr. Abiodun Nofiu also attributed the hike in the prices to extortion of transporters by security personnel at different checkpoints.
Nofiu said that the price of a ram goes up when this and other factors are added to the cost of purchase.
Mr. Yekini Ojo and Alhaji Isa Dasuni, goat sellers at Census Livestock Market, Surulere said that transporters from Sokoto, Kano or Maiduguri now charged as high as N200,000 per trip instead of N120, 000.
They said that even prices of the feeds had increased “because a bag of groundnut leaf now sells for N4,000 instead of N2,500.”
Ojo stressed that the cost of cleaning up a ram or goat had also gone up from N5 to N20.
According to them, all these are expenses which add to the amount a ram is sold during sallah.
A check by NAN on the rams in the markets visited showed that their prices had gone up by between 20 and 50 percent.
Dasuni said that a big ram sold for N120,000 from N100,000 while a medium and small rams go for N80,000 from N40,000 and N70,000 from N35,000.
The ram sellers said that the price of a big ram could drop to as low as N50,000, medium size (N20,000), small size (N7,500) after the sallah celebration.
