Eid-El-Kabir: Ilorin Ram Traders Bemoan Low Patronage, as Smallest Ram Cost 70,000 naira. 

By Bamidele Aremu

Muslims around the world are getting ready to celebrate the year 2025 Eid-el-Kabir festival. With less than 5 days to this year’s celebration, traders in Ilorin , the capital city of Kwara have decried low patronage from customer citing economic hardship, inflation among other reasons as causes.

The Eid-el-Kabir is the biggest Islamic festival that falls on the 10th day of Dhul-Hijjah, the Islamic Lunar calender.

Essentially, killing of rams hold much significance in the celebration of the festival. It is meant to commemorate the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son , as an act of obedience to Allah’s command.

A visit by National Pilot on Saturday, to Mandate market in Ilorin captured livestock traders lamenting low patronage amid rising prices. The sellers were seen tending to their livestock and waiting for buyers.

One of the ram sellers, Alhaji Ibrahim Uthman said that in 2024, customers had by this time started buying rams to keep at home for the Sallah celebration, adding that the reverse is the case this year.

Decrying a low turnout of people, he said he barely sold half of the livestock since the preparation for the festival commenced.

“As you can see the market, there are lots of livestock available for sale but because of high cost, there is low turnout of buyers. People have not really been patronising, the ones that patronised made part payment and we’re still waiting for them to balance up. Market has never been slow like this before, we now buy one ram at the cost we used to buy four.” he lamented

Speaking further, he attributed the hike in prices of ram to the hike in fuel price, travelling costs, and other challenges.

“We source our rams from Masi village around Daura, in Katsina state, you can see the distance. We have to bribe some people to convey the rams down here. The roads are bad too. Before, the travelling take us only two days but now because of the road challenges, we use almost 3 to 4 days on the road and extra days on road means extra cost. Things are really difficult. We are appealing to government to fix the roads.They should also bring down price of petrol so that everyone will be comfortable.” he pleaded

In addition, another seller , who simple identified himself as Mallam Kano attributed the low patronage to inflation and high cost of the animals.

“The rams are really expensive such that people that do buy to distribute before could no longer afford it. The rams we bought at 90,000 last year is now being sold for 150,000 and this is the reason why people are not turning up. You can’t even feel the celebration mood at all, people are not buying, market is not moving. We brought 40 rams even with our long-time customers that have made part payment, we’ve only managed to sell 15 so far, and we still have 25 rams left unsold”. he lamented

Also, National Pilot paid a visit to another ram market in Asa-dam to enquire on how people are buying foodstuff most especially rams towards the coming festival.

Findings from the traders revealed that people have not really turned up. Few buyers were seen haggling on prices with the sellers. The traders who cited soaring cost of food prices, government policies among other reasons also complained that instead of food prices to decrease it kept increasing daily.

Some of them obviously pessimistic because of the situation and refused to air their opinion saying governments have year-in-year-out continued to fail them.

However, findings by National Pilot revealed that a that a sizeable ram now sold for ₦70,000 as against last year’s ₦43,000.

According to Mrs. Grace Olarenwaju, a foodstuff seller, economic hardship has forced the market to dry up as people can no more afford three square meals a day.

She said: “We all know that this year’s market economy has risen more than that of last year. Everything is too costly. It was not this bad when we were fasting because during fasting period people used to inflate price of food. We sold a bag of beans during fasting period for ₦75,000 but now were selling it at ₦120,000 to ₦130,000″

In the words of a grain merchant, Alhaja Aminat: “there are no customers, there is no money, people can no more feed, yet food prices keep increasing. Nigerian rice that ought to be cheap is also sold at N75,000 per bag. We don’t know what to do. We sell a cup of garri at N1300, we can’t even feel any festivity in the air. This is the ever-busy Oluode market, you can see how dry the market is, and no one is buying anything. And people want to buy now but they lack purchasing power.”

Asked on what government can do to salvage the situation, she said: “We no longer trust the government. We leave everything in God’s hands ” she added