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From Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin Kebbi
Do you want to be rich and comfortable? Then come to Kebbi State and join the band of traders buying and selling oranges from Benue State.
In Kebbi State, traders are smiling to the bank as a result of the boom in orange business. The 50 year Jega depot, where sacks of oranges straight from Benue State are bought and sold, life could not be better for the traders. Business is booming and life is, evidently, beautiful.
But there is a price tag. Like everything good and sweet, orange business in the state has its flip- side. The trade comes with its own challenges and sacrifices, sometimes life threatening in nature.
The first of these obstacles, according to players in the industry, is the high risk of traveling on the highway linking Kebbi to Benue State. According to many orange traders, the journey from Jega town to Benue State to buy oranges takes days, adding that it is far from rosy.
Jibril Abubakar often travels this dangerous road, conveying bags of oranges to Jega depot. In the past 25 years, it has not been this bad.
On several occasions, he had come face to face with harm in the discharge of his assignment.
A quick glance at his body confirmed his tragic tale. There are dark patches of wounds he had sustained in the hands of criminals and men of the underworld during one of his trips from Gboko to Lafia about three years ago.
“Look at my shoulder and my waist, what did you see? These are gunshot
wounds- wounds that I sustained in the course of going to buy oranges from Benue”to Kebbi State”, he said, pointing at each of the ugly marks on his skin.
Besides the risk, Daily Sun gathered that trips to Benue are marked by so many check points. These checkpoints are mounted by different security agencies, but mostly by police personnel.
“We encounter them at different check points between Gboko and Lafia.
We spend as much as N50,000 in all to settle them before they let us pass,” he stated.
He said that the choice of oranges from Benue State, despite the obstacles on the road remained that, “Benue State has more oranges
than the South West. We have no better choice than to go to Benue State because they have plenty of good oranges, oranges that you cannot resist.”
He admitted that he began selling oranges several years back by buying just a sack of oranges, adding that soon afterward, he started distributing the same items to hawkers. That is the way he grew to the status of an orange dealer.
He said: “We buy oranges from Benue State. When we go there, we purchase a whole orange farm from its owners. After the deal is agreed upon, they pluck the oranges, put it inside the sacks for us for onward transportation.
“Before the fuel subsidy removal, a sack of oranges was sold for N1,000. But today, it has gone up. We buy a sack from farms for about N2,000 depending on their sizes.”
While shedding more lights about the existence of Jega Orange Deport,the Vice-Chairman Orange Traders Association, Jega Local Government Area of the state. Aminu Mailemu disclosed that he has been in the orange business for the past 50 years.
Aminu Birnin, aged 65, has been a player in the industry for almost half a century. Doing the business has enabled him to build the house where he lives, ensured that he had a successful marriage and availed him the resources for marrying out his two daughters weeks ago. He added that the profit he made from orange business paid his bill to the Holy pilgrimage.
The Vice-chairman, Orange Traders Association, Jega Local Government Area, Aminu Mailemu disclosed that he has been in the business for a while.
“I have two wives, twelve children and about 300 people that directly depend on me and the benefit I make from orange selling” he told Daily Sun.
To him, oranges from Benue State are better because top civil servants and wealthy people in the state invest heavily in farming orange while they are in service
“Once they retire, they built houses inside these farms, where they retire to and keep adequate eyes on their investment” he stated.
He noted that orange farmers in the South-west do not usually replace their dying orange trees on time where they want to avoid shortages-unlike in Benue State orange farmers who are big time elites and who quickly replace their dying orange trees.
Aminu, who was full of praises to Almighty Allah for sparing his live and others in the business, said “ We usually engage at least seven trailer’s from Kebbi State to go to Benue to return our oranges.
“We are the one supplying Birnin Kebbi, Kamba and Kangiwa. But the major challenge now is that after the Federal Government removed fuel subsidy, we are paying higher for transportation, paying over N2 million per trailer instead of N1 million that we used to pay.
“Our second challenge is the cost of offloading of the oranges from the trucks. Before subsidy removal, we commit N30 per sack, but now it is up to N60 per sack of oranges.
Aminu Yellow who is the Chairman of orange distributors in the area explained that he usually get between N3,000 and N6,000 in a day depending on the market circumstances adding that labourers gets for as much as N2,000 per day . He tasked the state and federal government to come with palliatives and support so that their businesses would grow.
