JUST recently, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for March 2022, revealed that Nigeria’s inflation increased to 15.92 per cent in March 2022, indicating the highest increase since October 2021. The inflation could not have come at a worse time than now for christians who have been celebrating the Easter period. This piece is on the hike in the price of chicken, a constant staple in Lagos homes during Easter celebrations. JOSEPH OLAOLUWA reports.

For four days, Christians all over the world have been celebrating the Easter period. The situation has not been different in Lagos.

The norm for many years during Easter in the city had been Christian homes celebrating with rice, sumptuously topped with enticing pieces of chicken. The period was always so lavishly celebrated that many Christian families would, after satiating themselves, magnanimously share plates of rice and sizeable pieces of chicken to neighbours and friends. Chicken meals have become so synonymous with Easter celebrations.

There would be no such fiesta in many homes in Lagos this dying Easter period, as a survey by The ICIR revealed. Spiralling inflation has hit the cost of chicken so much so that it was impossible for many consumers to buy the bird for the Easter celebrations.

The price of the fowl Bunmi Fajeminigba wanted to buy at the Ogba market on Saturday, March 16, 2022 was enough to throw him off his feet. Fajeminigba began to prance round and round, thinking of what next to do. He appeared clueless in the fez cap that he donned.

After much thought, he asked for a white bird, which he weighed in his hand. Then he gave the order for it to be killed and cleaned. It had cost him N4,500, he told The ICIR.

The consumer lamented that this Easter season was unusually difficult. He explained he would have easily bought four fowls two years ago with the amount he was using to buy the white hen.

“Two years ago, I bought four chickens. Today, I cannot afford more than one, and that’s with stress. Things are too costly this time around.

“Last year, I bought a breeder for N4,500. Today, that size of breeder costs N11,000,” he groaned.

‘Chicken is a luxury’

An accountant, who gave his name simply as Lawrence and who The ICIR spoke with also at the Ogba market, described chicken, at its present cost, as a “luxury.”

Lawrence asked, “The common man can now only buy small pieces of meat from a meat seller. How many common people can afford to pay N13,000 for a broiler and N4,000 for a layer?

“This time last year, a layer was N2,800-N3,000 maximum. Now, we are buying a layer for N4,000 plus. The inflation is really biting hard. It is not just feeding alone, but in everything. I am surprised how everyone is surviving.”

Celebrating Easter with eja egun

Many low-income residents of the city of Lagos who could not meet up with the norm of celebrating Easter with chicken have been having to do with the round, roasted (panla) stock fish, hailed in the local parlance as eja egun.

The delicacy got the name from the fact that it was hawked or sold in markets mostly by women from Badagry, whose people are widely known as egun. Eja egun has always been well patronised in Lagos, but mostly by the financially challenged, because it comes at a relatively cheap price.

The fish became more popular during the Covid-19 restrictions when many homes found it difficult to access markets and were short on funds. Eja egun hawkers, therefore, became ubiquitous in the city serving the useful purpose of filling consumers’ soup pots.

As prices of chicken virtually flew out of the window for many low-income earners in Lagos, it has been eja egun to the rescue. A celebrant at Somolu, an average density population in the city, Mrs Comfort Bajulaiye, told The ICIR she did not hesitate to resort to eja egun to prepare Easter meals for her family when she found prices of chicken astronomically unaffordable. Bajulaiye gave the price of four not-too-small pieces of the eja egun as N500, saying she prepared a good meal for her family of three children and her husband with N1,500 worth of the fish.

Another Easter celebrant, Shola Akinsanya, a carpenter, also said he had to buy eja egun to celebrate the festival with his family of his wife and four children.

“I definitely can’t afford to buy a chicken. Even if I had bought a small one of N2,500, it won’t be enough for my family for one meal. There is nothing in it. Raw fishes are also expensive, whether it is titus, kote or panla (stock fish). But eja egun served my purpose and my family well. Nigeria now is to do according to your means,” Akinsanya said.'

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/as-easter-celebrations-wind-up-chicken-a-luxury-say-consumers/