It is a cheering news to Nigerian farmers and the citizens as prices of fertilizer, which had soared for years, have begun to fall, giving a hope that food sufficiency is in the offing in the most populous country in Africa.
BizPoint understands that many farmers, especially in Northern Nigeria had not been able to produce sufficient food, as others suspended the farming this season due to rise in prices of fertilizer.
Checks by this newspaper revealed that a bag of fertilizer, which was sold at highest N5,000 between 2014 and 2016, had skyrocketed to N25,000 between late 2022 and February 2023.
However, investigation by BizPoint indicated that the prices of the varieties of fertilizer has fallen drastically, development that would give farmers a relief and provide food sufficiency in the country with estimated 200 million population.
Check at Abuja Yandusa Fertilizer Market in Kano, the biggest market of the commodity in Northern Nigeria revealed that all the three major fertilizer companies, namely; Notore, Dangote and Indorama, have crashed the prices of the product.
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A dealer in the market, who preferred to be anonymous said they just woke up to see the new price regime of fertilizer from the producer companies fell by at least N4000 a bag.
He said they later found out that even the government had subsidized the raw materials for producing the fertilizer to the companies.
According to the dealer, a price of Urea is N19,000/bag after it was sold from N23,000 up to N25,000 per bag a few months ago.
He added that NPK fertilizer, which was sold at N26,000, had now crashed by N4,000 to be sold at N22,000 per bag.
The dealer explained that based on their findings, the issue of cashless policy introduced by Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN had contributed to the fall of he prices of fertilizer, as most of their customers are from rural areas and do not have bank accounts.
“This made the market very low because most of our customers are farmers from rural areas and you know, majority of them don’t have bank accounts. They stopped coming to purchase the commodity because they did not have cash to purchase and nor have bank accounts to make transfer. This forced us to crash the prices especially for those that come to buy in cash,” the dealer disclosed.
He said this also forced the fertilizer companies to crash the price to the dealers because the supply had been drastically low.
Secondly, according to him, the just concluded elections had been another factor that led to the crash of the prices of the fertilizer in Nigeria.
According to him, customers from other African countries such as Cameroon, Sudan, Niger, Chad, Ghana, among others, did not come to supply the fertilizer in Nigeria due to the election and that had negatively affected the market, a factor that compelled the companies to crash the prices in order to boost supply.
“Also, another factor that i made my investigation independently is that, we have discovered that Senegal now produces cheaper fertilizer than Nigeria.
“This might not be unconnected with the fact that Senegal now produces cheaper fertilizer than Nigeria. So, for fear of losing customers from other African countries that supply from Nigeria, the companies might have consider that to reduce the prices in order not to lose the customers to Senegal,” he said.
The dealer also expressed optimism that the price could fall further based on the activities in the market.
BizPoint reports that with this development, Nigerian farmers could use this opportunity to make huge purchase of the fertilizer against next season.
However, there is fear that the high demand of the fertilizer could lead to the rise in the prices as it is a norm in Nigerian markets.
