Official asks people to stop eating hides to let Nig - leatherbiz: Lea Leatherbiz

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Official asks people to stop eating hides to let Nigeria earn money from them

10/10/2012
A senior official at the Nigerian Institute of Animal Science, Oyedele Oyedeji, has told local media that his organisation wants people from different ethnic groups across the African country to stop eaing animal hides so that tanners and finished shoe and leathergoods manufacturers can extract economic value from them.

He said that it is common for people to buy a goat for a price of around $100, to leave the skin on when cooking the meat and eat the skin too. “But with the skin from that goat you can produce 10 pairs of shoes for ladies, each at the cost of around $30. If you did this, you would have made $300 from a $100 goat.”

He went on to say that one cow hide in Nigeria would be able to provide enough raw material for 30 or even 40 pairs of shoes. “We should enlighten farmers and members of the public through advocacy and various programmes,” he said.

Mr Oyedeji pointed out that leather is the second-largest non-oil foreign exchange earner (after cocoa) for Nigeria. “We have more than 30 tanneries in Nigeria and only about seven are functional,” he complained, “primarily because there are insufficient hides and skin. It is a paradox that as the government is trying to get the tanneries back on their feet, the boots and belts being worn by Nigeria’s para-military bodies are imported.”


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