From Mustapha Adamu, Kano
Bakers of local bread, popularly known as ‘Gurasa’ in Hausa parlance, in their numbers have staged a protest against rising price of flour in Kano state.
The protesters, mostly women, notably Gurasa bakers, staged the protest at Chediyar Yangurasa, in Dala Local Government area on Friday morning.
The protesters were carrying placards containing different inscriptions written in both Hausa and English that include “High costs of flour is threatening our business”, “High flour prices is unacceptable “, “Flour price is too high in Nigeria; we need help, among others.
Speaking to newsmen during the protest, Chairperson of the Kano State Gurasa Bakers Association, Fatima Auwal, said more than half of the bakers have been rendered jobless as a result of soaring prices of the flour.
According to her, they had been protesting against rising price of the commodity since when it reached N16,000, but now, she said, is N43,000 per 50kg bag.
Though, all flour mills have increased prices, Ms Auwal particularly mentioned IRS as the product they solely use to make Gurasa, calling on the BUA company to consider their plights to make the price affordable to them.
“We are out here on the streets protesting to let the leaders know situation we have found ourselves in at the moment.
“This is business longstanding business but it is facing a great threat due to rise in price of flour.
“More than half of us have been rendered jobless as we can not afford to buy flour at this high price.
” We started protest since a 50kg bag of flour was N16,000, now it is N43,000 and we can not afford it.
“We solely use IRS Flour produced by BUA, because it is the best for our production but the price is too high for us. Whenever we go to purchase flour, we get increase of at least N1,500 on the price of a bag of flour.
“We therefore appeal to BUA, other flour mills and the federal government to intervene and come to our rescue.
“We are in a very difficult situation, we need help. This is a small scale industry mostly run by women. Life is becoming more difficult to us. We hardly feed or send our children to school due to this hardship.
“Many have lost their capital. It is such that only only 25 percent of us are now remaining in the business as many others have closed down due to lack of capital.
“We are calling on the authorities and those concerned to look into this matter because we are running out of business and is affecting our families,” Ms Auwal lamented.
Efforts to contact the BUA company in Kano proved unsuccessful as its major dealuers could not be reached as at the time of filing this story.
