Nigeria’s dairy farmers are being forced out of business while the country’s market for imported European fat-filled milk powder continues to expand. Dairy farms have been closed, and some have been sold off; their owners have ventured into what they consider more profitable businesses.
Farmers interviewed during this investigation insisted that Nigeria could meet domestic demand for milk if the dairy sector were developed. However, the sector is not, and farmers are forced to work under harsh conditions where they are outpriced in a market dominated by cheap products.
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Nigeria imports at least 60 per cent of its total dairy consumption, with most of these imports coming from Europe. Each year, the country spends around $1.3 billion annually to meet domestic demand while producing 600,000 tonnes of milk.
Local production has failed to meet domestic demand, and national authorities say this is largely because indigenous breeds are not optimised for high milk yield. Most local cattle produce only 1 to 2 litres of milk per day, compared to over 30 litres from high-yielding foreign breeds. However, dairy farmers also attribute the low milk production to poor funding and investment in the dairy sector.
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Through this collaborative investigation with DeSmog, a UK-based media outlet, PREMIUM TIMES identified a myriad of domestic issues that have affected farmers’ ability to improve production. Meanwhile, multinational dairy companies from Ireland and other European countries, aware of the market gap, are increasingly targeting the country with cheap milk substitutes.
These imports are often in the form of fat-filled powder (FFMP), a type of milk powder produced by blending skimmed milk with vegetable fat after the original milk fat has been extracted.
Last year, a PREMIUM TIMES investigation revealed that FFMP is sold to unsuspecting Nigerians as milk, despite its failure to meet the standard milk requirements. According to the EU Common Market Organisation (CMO) regulation, milk should be pure, with nothing added or extracted.
While the market is dominated by a cheap milk lookalike, Nigeria’s dairy farmers are held back by insecurity, inflation, inadequate government support, and poor infrastructure.
Commercial dairy farmers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES complained about the high cost of production with minimal returns.
“Due to this, farmers are forced to shut down less than five years after they are established,” Daniyan Abimbola, a commercial dairy farmer in Osun State, said.
High operational cost, gap in supply chain
Mr Abimbola is now considering selling off his farm and milk collection centre in Ishiro, a small town in Osun, southwest Nigeria, which he established in 2019. The centre, he said, is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain due to the high operational costs.
The absence of electricity and a good road network, for instance, means he spends more on fuel for generators, transportation, and cold storage to preserve milk quality. There’s also the cost of hiring skilled labour, veterinary supplies, and quality cattle feed.
Dairy farmers told PREMIUM TIMES that operational costs are high and often eat into potential profits. For Mr Abimbola, whose frustration has been mounting, the farm seems to be growing into a liability.
“I want to take time off,” he told our reporter. “If things don’t go well, maybe sell off the land, move to the city and try something else. I am at a point where I just have to keep mourning myself.”
Hamisu Buratai, chief executive officer of Arwaski Farms in Nasarawa, said the sector’s limited development makes it hard for local farmers to compete with foreign brands. Products made from fresh milk, he stated, are outpriced by those made with reconstituted powder due to its lower cost and longer shelf life.
Farmers who spoke to our reporter also pointed out weaknesses in the milk supply chain. Poor infrastructure and long distances between pastoral settlements and collection points make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to aggregate and transport milk.
These affect the availability of milk as pastoralists account for 95 per cent of milk production in the country.
Meanwhile, in the North, where a significant portion of Nigeria’s raw milk is produced, armed banditry continues to disrupt businesses and displace pastoral communities. In 2022, an attack on the Bobi Grazing Reserve in Niger state forced pastoralists and dairy companies to halt operations just as large-scale milk production was about to begin. Kenneth Ahaneku, director of Neon Dairies Plc—one of the affected companies—told PREMIUM TIMES that the company lost an estimated N20 billion as a result and has remained in limbo since the attack.
These challenges have left many farmers discouraged and unable to scale up production, despite producing quality milk and dairy products, said Dianabasi Akpainyang, Executive Director of the Commercial Dairy Ranchers Association of Nigeria (CODARAN), an umbrella body for indigenous dairy farmers.
Subsidies for EU dairy farmers
Due to a range of EU subsidy programmes that allow dairy companies to export and reconstitute milk at a cheap price, European dairy companies have a huge advantage over local milk producers.
One such subsidy scheme is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which provides direct payments and market support to European farmers, helping to keep production costs low.
CAP was developed in Brussels in 1962. In its early years, the goal was to ensure food security and a stable agricultural market; since then, it’s evolved to help European agriculture compete globally. The subsidy paid to farmers through this scheme allowed dairy companies to purchase surplus milk at reduced prices, process it into powdered or fat-filled milk, and export it.
Irish farmers have received around €50 billion in funding from the CAP funding since 1973. Production further increased with the removal of the milk quota system in April 2015, which had previously restricted production levels.
As reported by the Irish Farmers Journal, since the quota was removed, Irish milk production has increased by 50 per cent, from 5.6 million litres in 2014 to 8.4 million litres in 2024.
The main Irish companies identified to be exporting to Nigeria were Lakeland Dairies, Ornua, The Milk Company, and Tirlán, according to Ireland’s trade data aggregator, Volza.
Ornua supplies Kerrygold Avantage, a widely consumed fat-filled milk powder, to Nigeria, while Lakeland Dairies has been identified as supplying its powder through Promasidor, a multinational company producing Cowbell and Milksi.
According to Adrien Trouvadis, a researcher with GRET, an NGO operating in West Africa, this CAP support distorts global prices.
“That is why the price on the [global] market is lower than what is needed for European farmers,” he said, calling it an “unequal system” where products are “dumped” on the African market at an “artificially low price.”
However, Eoin Murphy, a research officer at Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Teagasc), told our team that export is simply the model for the Irish dairy industry.
He said fat-filled milk powder is primarily produced for the export market while adding that Ireland “produces far in excess of what we need, and as a result, most of it is exported.”
For Nigerian dairy farmers, however, there are no subsidies, funding or related support to boost production.
Limited funding for local producers
Abiola Olaniran, a lecturer in Food Science and Nutrition at Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State, said multinational dairy companies are taking advantage of Nigerian farmers’ inability to meet rising local demand and flooding the market with cheap substitutes that appeal to price-sensitive consumers.
Also, Mr Akpainyang, the CODORAN official, said this is due to years of neglecting the sector and the government’s unwillingness to maximise available resources. Nigeria imports more dairy products than many African countries despite having 20.6 million cattle, one of the highest numbers on the continent. Its cattle population surpasses that of South Africa, which has 12.3 million cattle. Morocco has 3.5 million and Tunisia has 900,000.
Yet, these three countries produce double the milk volume that Nigeria does.
Nigeria’s cattle population is dominated by indigenous breeds like White Fulani, Sokoto Gudali, and Red Bororo. While these breeds are well adapted to the local climate, they produce low volumes of milk.
However, this challenge isn’t unique to Nigeria, although many other African countries with similar low-yield breeds have boosted production through crossbreeding and the adoption of exotic dairy cows.
South Africa and Tunisia, for instance, have invested in high-yield foreign breeds such as Friesian, Jersey, and Ayrshire, which can produce up to 25–30 litres of milk per day. Morocco also improved its local stock through crossbreeding and in 2022, produced 2.5 billion litres of milk.
However, commercial farmers in Nigeria said they lack the funding to execute such capital-intensive projects.
What makes Nigeria’s situation dire is not just the importation of cheap milk substitutes, mainly from Europe, but that Nigerian farmers, unlike their European counterparts, get little or no government support and so cannot compete.
Officials of the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Livestock Development told this newspaper that there are no government-backed funding or loan schemes specifically tailored to support dairy farmers in the country.
Farmers are also unable to secure loans from banks due to the high-risk nature of the sector, lack of collateral, and absence of formal financial records.
According to experts, banks consider the industry unprofitable due to low productivity and limited market access.
Backwards integration programme
Irish dairy exports to West Africa have slightly declined, a trend Bord Bia attributed to shifts in national policies and changing attitudes toward dairy imports.
According to data obtained by DeSmog from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office, exports to the region fell from over 100,000 metric tonnes in 2021 to 80,000 in 2022 and then to about 62,000 metric tonnes in 2023.
In Nigeria, the drop was even more pronounced, falling from 38,000 metric tonnes in 2021 to 27,000 in 2022 and then to around 16,000 in 2023 and 14,000 in 2024. This was due to the foreign exchange restrictions imposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria on milk and dairy products imports in February 2020.
The policy was initiated to boost local production and reduce dependence on imports by compelling companies to invest in the domestic dairy sector. Restricting forex for import made it more difficult and expensive for importers to access the foreign exchange needed to bring in dairy products.
The policy was an instrument of the Backwards Integration policy, a national policy that compels companies to invest directly in raw material processes required for local production. The forex restriction was removed in 2024.
However, dairy imports still dominate the market.
Nigeria is the largest destination country for Irish FFMP, importing almost 30 per cent of the total exports to West Africa. The country has imported over 100,000 tonnes of milk in the last five years. At the same time, Ireland exported over 400,000 tonnes to West Africa between 2020 and 2024.
DeSmog found that Lakeland Dairies, Tirlán, and Ornua, with a combined turnover of 7.8 billion euros in 2024, were the highest exporters of FFMP to Nigeria and Ghana between 2021 and 2024.
Meanwhile, the impact of the backwards integration policy has been minimal as programmes launched under the policy have yielded little progress.
Efforts made by multinational dairy companies to produce milk locally have been fraught with challenges.
In Kaduna, the construction of the Damau Household Milk Farm, a project carried out in collaboration with Arla, a Danish dairy company, has stalled due to the state government’s failure to provide funding. In Oyo State, where FrieslandCampina WAMCO, a subsidiary of Dutch dairy giant, Royal FrieslandCampina, operates, a PREMIUM TIMES investigation found evidence of child labour being used to boost production and drive up profits for the company.
WAMCO was also involved in the development of the Bobi Grazing Reserve in Niger alongside three other companies, before operations were disrupted by attacks.
The policy has done little to improve the lives of the local farmers and operators it was meant to support.
Mr Ahaneku, the director of Neon Dairies Plc, told PREMIUM TIMES that the company moved to Bobi on the instructions of the Central Bank, lost its investments to violent attacks, and was unable to get any government support.
”We invested with the supposed backing of the federal government, lost everything, and the government refused to compensate us or even provide the loan it promised.
“It was like a Ponzi scheme where you invest with a promise to get profit and end up with nothing,” he said.
As the former Central Bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, noted, the policy has only scratched the surface.
New ministry underfunded
The newly established Ministry of Livestock Development is also off to a rough start, with an underwhelming budget allocation of just ₦11.8 billion in 2025. Lawmakers have described the allocation as grossly inadequate for a ministry starting from scratch.
This budget only covers basic administrative costs, salaries, and limited operational expenses without funding for critical projects.
Before the ministry was created last year, the dairy sector was lumped under the larger agriculture ministry, which prioritised crops, leaving the industry with limited public investment and budgetary constraints. The neglect of the sector partly formed the basis for the creation of the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock in July 2024.
However, the ministry is still held back by limited funding, according to Maidugu Shuaibu, chief officer at the Department of Animal Husbandry, Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.
“The Ministry of Livestock is now a year old, but without funding, we can’t do anything,” he said. “Inadequate funding affects almost every aspect of our operations.”
“The government has begun taking baby steps now. For instance, it is mandating the multinationals to undertake backwards integration projects, requiring them to invest in local production, sourcing, and processing. But this kind of project takes time to yield results,” he said.
Ireland’s investment in trade mission to West Africa
Meanwhile, global players continue to shape Nigeria’s dairy landscape. Bord Bia, Ireland’s state agency for food promotion, has invested significantly in trade missions to Nigeria and other West African countries. Between 2021 and 2024, the agency spent over €80,000 on a joint campaign with Ornua around World Milk Day.
At a trade mission organised by the agency in 2023, Nigeria’s “consumer lifestyle” was identified as “aspirational” to industry executives. The mission marked a decade of Irish trade in Nigeria and aimed to “increase knowledge of Irish dairy as a whole” in Nigeria and Senegal.
Documents obtained by DeSmog through an FOI request showed the executives of Ornua, Lakeland Dairies, and Tirlán were present at the trade mission, which lasted three weeks and was held in Abuja and Lagos in Nigeria and Dakar in Senegal.
In a redacted slides presentation, obtained by DeSmog through an FOI request, industry executives were told: “Keep in mind, Nigerian consumers are aspirational. Brand is a key proxy for communicating on these attributes.” One of the slides also noted “the importance of brands and brand-building in Nigeria, even among lower social classes.”
Another slide attributed the growth in FFMP imports to West Africa’s increasing population, describing it as “more mouths to feed”. It also highlighted the importance the industry places on brands in winning over customers.
Nowhere in the document did the participants discuss support for local dairy farmers or local dairy production in Nigeria.
In the end, the trade mission was considered a success by industry.
Bord Bia said clients met with over 300 “trade targets” and concluded there is a “significant potential” for Irish agri-food sales in the region.
READ ALSO: INVESTIGATION: Milk or Mimic: Nigerias dairy market, a hub for inferior EU products
Social media ads
Dairy companies, including Ornua and Lakeland Dairies, are also using public figures and social media to promote the consumption of fat-filled powders and push misleading narratives about the product.
Nigeria regulations classify FFMP as an alternative to real milk. The country’s food regulator, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), told PREMIUM TIMES last year that its regulation prohibits the advertisement of FFMP as a product in the same category as whole milk or skimmed milk.
But an analysis by DeSmog and PREMIUM TIMES of hundreds of social media posts between 2022 and 2024 found that Kerrygold Avantage and Milksi were not advertised as alternative milk powder. We also found that companies sometimes overstate the health benefits of their products.
Kerrygold Nigeria’s social media regularly showcases images of Kerrygold Avantage, often referring to the product simply as “Kerrygold milk.”
On Instagram, Facebook and X, the product is advertised through public figures and influencers as a “source of protein.”
A Facebook post said Milksi contained “all the right nutrients you need to be physically and mentally fit at all times.” Another post noted that it “contains all the calcium, proteins and vitamins essential for the proper development of growing children.”
Mrs Olaniran, the food scientist, said the trend of using social media and public figures to spread misinformation about certain products is called a food fad.
“This is a trend with negative impacts. Many of these celebrities do not consume the products they are promoting and are only after financial gains,” she said.
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