Frozen fish and chicken retailers in Warri, Delta State, have staged a peaceful protest over the rising cost of the products.
The traders, mostly women holding leaves, sang solidarity songs as they took their protest to some of the leading wholesalers of frozen foods in Warri South and Uvwie Local Government Areas.
The protesters said the daily rises in prices of frozen foods were becoming unbearable, as it was having adverse effects on their business.
One of the leaders of the protesters, Mrs Onoriode Onokpite, while speaking with journalists, lamented that retailers now record low patronage on daily basis.
She said customers no longer patronise them as they used to, and it is suffocating as most of them are bread winners of their families.
“We decided to take our protest to the wholesalers of frozen foods so that they can reduce prices of frozen foods for us. Government should wade into the matter. We are dying”, she said
A representative of Ocean Lord Frozen Foods Company, Solomon Ogheneovo, while reacting to the protest, attributed the cause of the increase in the frozen foods prices to the unprecedented increase in exchange of the naira to dollar.
Oghenevovo, acknowledging the right of the retailers of frozen foods to protest, said they were misdirecting their grievances, because the wholesalers bought products in foreign exchange of currency.
He said the protesters should rather direct their protest to government and not the wholesalers of frozen foods, because if the exchange rate of the naira to dollar is low, the retail price of frozen foods will equally be low.
