FG, stakeholders disagree over sales, trafficking of donkey

 Researcher reveals male outnumbers female donkeys

 

The Federal Government (FG) and other stakeholders have disagreed over the sale and trafficking of donkeys in Nigeria, just as a bill to ensure the stoppage of the sale passed the second reading at the National Assembly. This disagreement emerged at the recently held stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja last week.

While the FG wanted a protected donkey value chain production to avoid extinction, the private stakeholders under the umbrella of Donkey Processors, Marketers and Exporters Association of Nigeria believed the selling of donkey across border like any other animals would be beneficial to the country.

The Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) Dr. Abubakar Mu’azu said that efforts to prevent the extinction of the animal was already approved at the last National Agricultural Council Meeting held 2019 adding that this would attract stakeholders in the private and public sectors into better researching and development towards breeding and multiplication of the animals to meeting demand.

Mu’azu, who was represented by Director of Special Duties, Mrs. Fausat Lawal said donkeys are one of the ancient domesticated livestock valued for their ability to survive in harsh conditions; as well vital for rural transportation and farming particularly in the northern part of Nigeria, adding donkey had over the years supported the livelihoods of the rural population in many domestic chores.

 He revealed that Nigeria was one of the countries with a relatively large population of donkey estimated at about 974,499, which was largely due to cross-border movements by pastoral herdsmen from Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroun, adding “this stakeholders’ engagement has become imperative due to the emergence of large-scale global trading in donkey skins, with estimates of a minimum of 1.8 million donkey skins being traded annually, especially in Africa, and 10 million per annum globally.”

He said a thriving trade in donkey skins for export to China for the production of gelatine used in a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) had become a serious threat to the donkey population in Nigeria and Africa which is tending towards extinction.

A former National Assembly (NA) member, Hon. Datti Ahmed hinted that a bill towards protection of the donkey production against extinction had passed the second reading at the lower chamber pointing out that trading and export of the animals had been banned in some African countries, and that Nigeria could not be an exception. 

Said he, “selling and trading of donkeys should be banned, as the animal is currently an endangered species which needs to be well protected. If we sell all the donkeys we have to the Chinese and other countries, how do we then make up for the needs of the people in the rural areas who depend on donkeys for fetching water, transporting humans and farm produce from one location to another and also improving the livelihoods of the rural population?”

 The chairman, Donkey Processors, Marketers, and Exporters Association of Nigeria, Bala Abudulkareem said that the issue of donkey was not a different case from other livestock animals that people were breeding and selling without them going into extinction, adding that there was  need for federal government to consider her actions on banning the sales of the animal to other nations.

He explained, “We can make more than 2.1 billion naira from the exportation of the animal as one of the countries with the highest numbers of donkey. More jobs have been created through these transactions and should be encouraged with the foreign earnings that come into the country from other countries in the world.”

 In his presentation on the viability and economic reality of donkey breeding in Nigeria, Hon. Sani Zoroh said that the preservation and the welfare of the donkey must be taken seriously pointing out that the exportation needed to be stopped.

Said he: ‘’despite the fact that the sale and exportation of the animal has been banned, the Chinese are still coming to our country to engage in the smuggling and thereby leaving many communities with one or no donkey to do other domestic work which has increased the suffering of most old and poor due to the lack of good road network in our communities.’’

Zoroh who said that research had not been able to do anything on the development of the production and multiplication of the animal, confirmed that most of the shipping of the donkeys were not documented as about 2.1billion naira was yearly earned from the business.

 The Executive Director, National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI), Prof Abdullahi Kolo Mohammed said that the institute was already working on the different species that would enhance increase donkey production in the country.

Prof. Mohammed who was represented by Mr. Ibrahim Haruna advised that farmers needed to be educated on breeding male and female donkeys because most villages only had male donkeys without female to ensure procreation.