The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, has said that Nigeria might, in the near future, suffer scarcity of cow meat.
According to him, this could be attributed to the quantum of cows consumed daily without commensurate calving.
He said this while addressing newsmen during the weekend ahead of the National Conference on Transformation of the Livestock scheduled to hold in Abuja from Tuesday.
The Minister disclosed that Nigeria faces an economic danger if the number of cows slaughtered and consumed as meat on a daily basis is considered.
He said: “The way we are consuming cows, slaughtering them is quite alarming. Lagos alone consumes 6,000 cows a day, that’s the figure at abattoirs, not figure from birthday parties and burial ceremonies and so on.
“Imagine what Port Harcourt consumes; or Umuahia, Abuja, Kano, Kaduna and Maiduguri. If you add it up, we may be eating up to 80,000 to 90,000 cows a day and we are not calving as many.
“Which means a day will come, if the West Africans don’t come into Nigeria with their cows, we may find out we have no cattle. So, that’s an economic danger that faces us.”
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