Economy
THE Eggs Sellers and Distributors Association of Nigeria (ESDAN) has appealed to the Federal Government to assist its members to have access to funding without stringent conditions to boost eggs production.
Its National President, Mrs Olaide Graham, made the plea at the 1st anniversary of ESDAN, which coincided with the World Egg Day celebration in Egbeda area of Lagos.
Theme of the day was: “Protein for Life”.
ESDAN is an assemblage of traders, whose major interest is to meet the critical nutritional needs of every Nigerian.
This is by ensuring availability and affordable healthy eggs which is the basic source of protein according to Consumer Protection Council of Nigeria.
According to her, government should help us with soft loans without stringent conditions.
“We appeal to the Federal Government and all quality control agencies to rise up to the challenge of finance in the area of reasonable capital for our major distributors.
“We also urge the Federal Government to help address the various challenges facing our members in the areas of scarcity of reliable eggs producing farms.
“We have facilitated the disbursement of SME loans to some of our members in order to boost their trade.
“Most of our members would not have found it easy to continue in business, if not for this facility.
“Many farmers lacked storage facilities as eggs have limited life span.
“The whole brunt is borne by the distributors and the end users; so, quality control agencies should rise to this challenge,” Graham said.
She said that members of the association also need assistance in the area of cost of transportation of eggs from poultry farms to our end users.
Graham said that the goal of the association was to eradicate the old misconception that egg was food for the rich.
ESDAN president said: “This inform our intensive campaign of one egg per day, which we have vigorously emphasised in the last one year.
“The last one year of our existence has been full of activities geared toward the achievements of our goals.
“Our campaign against sales of bad eggs in the market has been rewarding base on feedbacks from our consumers.
“We have so far given guidelines to producers and this has been reduced to greater extent.
“We seek government’s intervention in ensuring total eradication of low quality eggs from our markets.
“We have also been able to achieve uniformity in price as association, with focus on the provision of affordable eggs on our customer’s tables.
“Also, we have in the last one year initiated a weekly campaign to promote eggs consumption. We have visited schools, markets, many religious organisations with free egg meal.”
Speaking as a special guest at the occasion, a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Lagos State, Chief Kehinde Bamigbetan, promised to support the association in achieving great potential in agro initiative of the state government.
Bamigbetan said he would ensure a meeting of minds between the association and the Lagos State Commissioner for Agriculture.
He described egg as an important nutritional meal that a child needs to grow, say that adult also knows that eggs play important role in a meal.
“Egg is part of human life. No food mixture that egg doesn’t go along with.
“Even in Lagos State, there has been a policy that children in the kindergarten schools are encourage to be eating one egg per day.
“In the area of food sufficiency, what the Federal Government is saying is that Nigeria can feed itself.
“We don’t need to depend on any other country. Nigeria is a blessed country to feed itself.
“Nigerians are complaining of foreign competition. Government should assist and give local food manufacturers room to grow their business.
“If we ignore foreign competitors, they will stop importing their goods to Nigeria market.
“We need to support our local manufacturers to improve in their business for expansion so that our youths can be gainfully employed, that is the purpose of what is going on now.
“Government will tap into the production of feeds and enable our eggs producers to engage in large scale poultry production,” Bamigbetan said.(NAN)
– Oct 14, 2019 @ 8:05 GMT |
Tags: Association urges FG to assist members to access funding in liberal term
