Donkey dealers oppose slaughter legislation, say 3m Nigerians to be unemployed

A bill seeking to regulate slaughtering of donkey would make three million Nigerians lose their jobs and investments, Donkey Dealers Association (DDA) has cautioned.

The National President, Ifeanyi Dike, spoke at a one-day public hearing on eight bills for the agriculture sector.

House of Representatives Committee Chairman on Agriculture, Mohammed Datti, earlier in his remarks, said the bill seeks to entirely prohibit killing and export of donkeys to China, saying the Asian nation was using the animal skin for its traditional medicine.

He said: “This animal is facing extinction and it’s an animal you cannot breed in large number because of the low rate of fertility.

“The major beneficiary in this trade is the donkey breeding merchants in China with a profit of $293 million dollars in 2016, to the detriment of the rural people of Africa and Caribbean.”

The public hearing was organised by Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.

The bill, Donkey Slaughter, Regulation and Export Certification Bill 2020 and sponsored by Senator Yahaya Abdullahi, is seeking to regulate killing of donkeys.

It also seeks to establish the breeding and ranching of the animal through export certification value chain with a view to mitigating extinction.

Dike said outright ban was not a solution.