Nigeria’s poultry industry is facing a serious production crisis, raising concerns over food security, protein supply, and malnutrition risks. Shortages of day-old chicks, delayed deliveries, rising feed costs, and weak hatchery output are forcing many farmers to scale down or shut down operations, AYOOLA OLASUPO writes
For months, Azeez Opadola woke up each morning to the sight of empty poultry pens. On his usually busy farm in Ibadan, Oyo State, bags of starter feed bought ahead of the last Ramadan sat untouched in a corner, while the brooders he had prepared for thousands of day-old chicks stood idle.
He had expected the birds he ordered to arrive weeks earlier. Instead, the agent kept postponing delivery dates. Week after week, the reality became harder to ignore. About N15m tied to his family’s poultry business became trapped in a pending chick allocation that never arrived.
The poultry farmer recalled how anticipation gradually turned into anxiety and then fear.
“I was expecting over 5,000 birds, but up till now, I have not received any. I even bought two tonnes of starter feed in preparation for the birds before the last Ramadan period. But because the birds never arrived, I had to give the feed to another farmer who was already in production,” he said.
