Donkey Dealers Association of Nigeria has called on the government to rescind plans to outrightly ban the killing of donkeys for commercial activities, which they said will lead to about 4 million Nigerians losing their jobs and may worsen the security situation.
The Association suggested that the government should regulate the donkey business which they said would be a source of revenue generation for the government and more jobs would be created.
The President of the Association, Mr Dike Ifeanyi while speaking with journalists after a public hearing of a bill at the National Assembly which seeks to ban the killing of donkeys because of the fear of the animal going into extinction.
Ifeanyi said the Association had gone into a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) on the genetic improvement of donkeys in order to curb the animal from going into extinction.
He said instead of the government risking putting over 4 million persons out of business by banning the trading and killing of donkeys, it should make regulations that will preserve the animal and also allow the dealers to do business with the animal.
“Today was a public hearing of the bill that was being proposed for the ban on killing of donkeys in Nigeria, and we the Donkey Dealers Association, who are the real investors in the donkey industry is calling upon the Federal Government today that we are saying no to blanket ban on donkey killing, we are supporting a regulatory framework that will assist us in ranching and breeding of donkey.
“We are telling the federal government donkey is a domestic animal and we can rear it. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Animal Production Research Institute, Zaria on donkey breeding.
“All these efforts by our members are for them to make sure that the depleting population of donkeys is restored and we cannot afford to lose more than 3 million people who are earning their source of livelihood from donkeys.
“This donkey business has been in existence for more than a century, and people have really invested. Our mission today is to tell the federal government that they have to take a second look at bills, instead of banning, that they should copy from other countries like Pakistan who are into donkey farming and the first in the world to build a donkey clinic, we can do better in this way in Nigeria.
“We are also considering the security implications of this blanket ban, Nigeria is volatile now, it may worsen considering the number of people that will lose their jobs.
“We are calling upon the Minister of Agriculture, stakeholders that they should support the regulation of donkey business in Nigeria for us to have the economic gains.
“Our members are abreast of the situation, they have been informed and all of us are ready for regulation, we are not ready for banning. Our members are not encouraging smugglers, our members are known, and their places of business are known.
“We have more than 150,00 members, about 450,000 persons are directly engaged in this donkey business and about 3 million indirectly engaged”, he noted.