Uduma Nkechi
It’s Christmas Eve and a quick market survey at the Rumuokoro market has shown that there are not much buyers and only few active sellers in the market.
The focus of the survey was on dealers of women beauty products such as hair extensions, dealers on food items such as rice, frozen chickens,beefs and so on and also clothing boutiques in the city.
In an interview with a cross section of the sellers, they lamented bitterly that this was their worst Christmas Eve sales so far.
“A bag of rice goes for N22,000 and lots of people cannot afford it,
Look at the bags of rice i bought and stored in my shop to sell,they are still exactly the way i stored them, market is so bad and the country is so difficult.
The federal government have banned the importation of foreign rice and yet there are no local bags of rice available for us retailers.
This is not what they promised us, this corruption of a thing the federal government is fighting hasn’t in anyway alleviated the hunger in this country.”
In the frozen chicken section, the sellers could be seen sitting idly and waiting for buyers to come, they also complained of very poor patronage.
Normally, we used to sell very well,two weeks at a stretch,but now,it fluctuates,at times,sales is good,at times,it’s bad.”
When our correspondent went deeper to survey the live chickens stand, there were just very few buyers at the stand negotiating prices with the sellers. In a chat with our correspondent,the sellers also complained of poor sales.
“Before,we buy chicks for as low as N150.00 but now we buy them at N450.0 plus the feeds, and when these chicks,mature to cocks and hens,we take them to the market to sell,only for buyers to drag the prices so low down to the cost price. It is really heartbreaking because we know that the reason why it is like this,is because the economy is so hard,the federal government should please do something about this, there is hunger in the country” They lamented.
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