Egg Scarcity Nigeria: Why Your Breakfast Just Became a Luxury at N8,500 Per Crate

By: Abudu Olalekan

Walked into the market lately? That crate of eggs you’re eyeing now costs more than some people’s weekly transport. Here’s the messy reality behind Nigeria’s poultry crisis.

You know something’s wrong when the protein becomes the priciest thing on your plate.

Walk into any supermarket right now. Not the fancy ones in Lekki, I mean regular stores. That crate of eggs? It’s staring back at you with a N8,500 price tag. Eight thousand five hundred naira. For eggs. Last January, farmers were selling these same crates for five thousand at the gate. Now you’re lucky to find them under six-five in the market, and that’s if you’re buying from the roadside seller who probably trekked three hours to get there.

So what happened? Everyone’s scrambling for day-old chicks. And I mean everyone.

Here’s the thing. You can’t make eggs without chickens. And you can’t get chickens because the hatcheries, they’re fully booked. Like, wedding venue in December kind of booked. Mojeed Iyiola, who chairs the Poultry Association in Lagos, says farmers are waiting six months just to restock. Six months. That’s half a year with empty coops and no income, just waiting for baby birds that currently cost N3,300 each. Last year? N1,800.

Do the math. It doesn’t add up for anyone.

“The hatcheries are fully booked months in advance,” Iyiola told us. Makes it impossible for farmers to keep their cycles going. Because these chicks, they don’t just start laying immediately. You gotta feed them, house them, pray they don’t get sick, and wait. By the time they start producing, your bank account’s already crying.

And the government, they have this idea. A $900 million partnership with China to boost production to six million eggs daily. Sounds great on paper. But the farmers we spoke to, they’re skeptical. Look, they say, you can’t build a skyscraper on a cracked foundation. Fix the inputs first. Let us actually import breeding birds without jumping through seventeen hoops. Maybe increase the licenses? Or just allow direct chick importation so we don’t have to wait half a year while our businesses bleed money.

Fuel prices aren’t helping either. Everything moves by road here. Those eggs don’t fly to your neighborhood store. So when diesel spikes, that crate gets more expensive before the chicken even lays the first egg.

The result? Nigerian families are quietly dropping eggs from their diets. Used to be the poor man’s protein. Accessible. Reliable. Now it’s becoming a weekend treat. And if you’re thinking this gets better soon, don’t hold your breath. The structural stuff, the import restrictions, the booking backlog, none of that’s fixing itself overnight.

Your morning omelette just became political. And expensive.