Nigerian Bakers Go On Strike Over High Cost Of Production 

The majority of the owners, managing directors, and partners of high-end bakeries in Nigeria are operating at huge losses, which is no longer sustainable.

By Omotayo Olutekunbi

To protest the high cost of doing business in Nigeria, breadmakers have announced that they will go on a four-day warning strike starting tomorrow, July 21.

The president of the Premium Breadmakers Association of Nigeria (PBAN), Emmanuel Onuorah, said in a statement on Wednesday that running a bakery in Nigeria has become nearly impossible due to the industry’s paralysis by the constant rise in the cost of fuel and baking supplies.

The majority of the owners, managing directors, and partners of high-end bakeries in Nigeria, he continued, are operating at huge losses, which is no longer sustainable.

“In a move to ensure the survival of the Premium breadmaking industry in Nigeria, we have decided to embark on a withdrawal of services beginning from Thursday 21st July 2022 for four days in the first instance and where no intervention from the government, we shall escalate the duration of the withdrawal,” Onuorah said.

“The reasons for the withdrawal of services are as follows: Incessant increase in the price of baking materials; Request Federal Government to stop charging 15 percent Wheat development levy on wheat import; Request NAFDAC to review downwards the 154,000 naira penalty charged bakeries on late renewal of certificates; Grant members access to grants and soft loans being given by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Minor, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) and Stoppage of multi – agencies regulation of the breadmaking industry.”

In order to assure the sector’s sustainability, he said that in 2021, a number of meetings with the sister associations in the breadmaking industry and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment (FMITI) in Abuja were held.

The most exemplary efforts to assure that ideas put out to preserve the breadmaking business would succeed, Onuorah said, had not produced the desired outcome.