Eid-El-Kabir: Traders Bemoan Low Patronage, High Cost Of Livestock, Others

Muslims around the world are getting ready to celebrate the year 2024 Eid-el-Kabir festival.

However, with less than 10 days to this year’s celebration, traders in Osogbo and its environs have decried low patronage from customer citing economic hardship, inflation among other reasons as causes.

OSUN DEFENDER reports that Eid-el-Kabir is the biggest Islamic festival that falls on the 10th day of Dhul-Hijjah, the Islamic Lunar calender.

Essentially, killing of rams hold much significance in the celebration of the festival. It is meant to commemorate the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to Allah’s command.

This year’s festival according to Sultan’s announcement is scheduled to be celebrated on Sunday, 16th June 2024.

A check by our correspondent on Friday, to the Sabo market in Osogbo shows livestock sellers lamenting low patronage amid rising prices. The sellers were seen tending to their livestock and waiting for intending buyers to patronise them.

One of the ram sellers, Mrs Ramotu, said that in 2023, Muslims had by this time started buying rams to keep at home for the Sallah celebration, adding that the reverse is the case this year.

Decrying a low turnout of people, she said she barely sold half of the livestock since the preparation for the festival commenced.

According to her: “As you can see the market, there are lots of livestock available for sale but because of high cost, there is low turnout of buyers. We have been here since last week Saturday, making it 7 days today. People have not really been patronising, the ones that patronised made part payment and we’re still waiting for them to balance up. Market has never been slow like this before, we now buy one ram at the cost we used to buy four.

“The rams are really expensive such that people that do buy to distribute before could no longer afford it. The rams we bought at 30,000 before is now being sold for 100,000 and this is the reason why people are not turning up. You can’t even feel the celebration mood at all, people are not buying, market is not moving. We brought 35 rams even with our long-time customers that have made part payment, we’ve only managed to sell 15 so far, and we still have 20 rams left unsold”.

Speaking further, she attributed the hike in prices of ram to the hike in fuel price, travelling costs, and other challenges.

“We source our rams from Masi village around Daura, in Katsina state, you can see the distance. We have to bribe some people to convey the rams down here. The roads are bad too. Before, the travelling take us only two days but now because of the road challenges, we use almost 3 to 4 days on the road and extra days on road means extra cost. Things are really difficult. We are appealing to government to fix the roads.They should also bring down price of things so that everyone will be comfortable.

“Last year we were able to sell for 70,000 to 80,000 but now the lowest is sold for 100,000, 110, 000 and so on”, she noted.

Also, our correspondent paid a visit to Oluode market in Osogbo to enquire on how people are buying foodstuff towards the coming festival.

Findings from the traders revealed that people have not really turned up for the festival. The traders who cited soaring cost of food prices, government policies among other reasons also complained that instead of food prices to decrease it kept increasing daily.

Some of them obviously pessimistic because of the situation and refused to air their opinion saying governments have year-in-year-out continued to fail them.

However, findings by our correspondents revealed that a bag of rice that was sold for N35,000 before is now sold at N80,000.

A bag of beans is now sold at N120,000 – N130,000 compared to N75,000 during fasting period.

A keg of vegetable oil is now sold for N55,000 instead of 31,000 it was sold in 2023.

According to Mr Alabi, a foodstuff seller, economic hardship has forced the market to dry up as people can no more afford three square meals a day.

He said: “We all know that this year’s market economy has risen more than that of last year. Everything is too costly. It was not this bad when we were fasting because during fasting period people used to inflate price of food. We sold a bag of beans during fasting period for N75,000 but now were selling it at N120,000 to N130,000.

In the words of a grain merchant, Alhaja Fasilat, “There are no customers, there is no money, people can no more feed, yet food prices keep increasing. Nigerian rice that ought to be cheap is also sold at N75,000 per bag. We don’t know what to do. We sell a cup of garri at N1300, we can’t even feel any festivity in the air. This is the ever-busy Oluode market, you can see how dry the market is, and no one is buying anything. And people want to buy but they lack purchasing power.

“In fact we are grateful for the previous year, at least we sold a keg of vegetable oil for N31,000, now it is N53,000. People who bought half a bag of rice from us before can no more afford it, they now buy in congo. Semovita is even worse, at least we sold 10kg at N6000 last year now it is 13,000, we now sell 5kg for N6000”, she noted.

Asked on what government can do to salvage the situation, she said: “We no longer trust the government, we only believe that God will change the situation for us”.

A visit to the pepper stand also revealed the same thing as pepper sellers were perturbed about the sudden increase in the price of pepper and tomatoes.

“We are not making sales, the price of pepper has not come down. In previous years, the market would have been crowded with people buying for the Ileya festival but reverse is the case now. As you can see, we make peppers according to segments and each segment has a fixed price. The smallest size of tomato is N3,500, the medium plate is N5000 while the bigger one is N10,000 and it is the same for pepper too. The prices keep increasing”.