LAGOS—One of the largest restaurant chains in the largest economy in Africa keeps running out of chicken. Its name is Chicken Republic.
In recent weeks, Nigeria has been in the grip of a run on chicken—a culinary conundrum since chicken and rice is the most popular pairing in Nigerian cuisine.
Johnny Rockets ran out of wings. Mr. Bigg’s, a chain of chicken shops, has closed branches because it couldn’t source drumsticks. KFC branches are boasting that, unlike their rivals, they have a steady supply of their most important ingredient.
In this country of 200 million, some of Nigeria’s most recognizable pop and movie stars have issued statements expressing the anger of consumers.
“I don’t get it... a chicken place wey no get chicken,” said Funke Akindele Bello, one of Nigeria’s most famous actresses, to her almost one million followers, in pidgin English. “Excuse me?!”
The reason is a policy fowl by Nigeria’s protectionist president. This summer Muhammadu Buhari shocked the country and its neighbors by closing the country’s land borders to all goods.
The move was intended to stop rampant smuggling and help enforce a decade-old directive that chicken and rice should be made with only locally farmed ingredients.
The announcement, part of a “Nigeria first” pivot, is popular with farmers and local producers who want a bigger stake of Nigeria’s $400 billion economy.
For years, the majority of the country’s chicken and rice was smuggled across the border with the tiny nation of Benin. The birds came on the back of motorcycles, taxis, trucks, canoes, bicycles, wheelbarrows or in buckets atop women’s heads. Traffickers usually paid off the customs officers in cash, or sometimes food.
President Buhari’s border closure was intended to stimulate domestic production enough to reduce an annual food import bill of some $4 billion and pry the country away from smuggled produce. The problem is that Nigeria currently produces less than one-third of the poultry and around half of the rice it consumes, according to official statistics.
Benin doesn’t actually have much chicken of its own to sell to Nigeria. So it imports chicken from foreign countries, then exports it to Nigeria.
In 2015, Benin imported almost as much whole frozen chicken as the U.K. and almost as much rice as China, making the country of 11 million the world’s fourth-biggest buyer of foreign rice, according to the World Trade Organization. At least 85% of Benin’s chicken slipped across the porous border into Nigeria, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These days, Benin imports about half the chicken it used to; it was the world’s sixth-largest buyer of rice last year.
Now the border is patrolled by operatives from Nigeria’s National Security Agency, the CIA’s partner institute on the ground, under a mission code-named “Exercise Swift Response.” Dozens of trucks carrying chicken and rice have been impounded.
Because chicken can’t get through to Nigeria, Benin was stuck with way more than it could use. Thousands of frozen chickens have been buried in shallow graves; disposing of them that way was cheaper than incinerating them. Now, the vast cold stores that once held tons of poultry on the Benin side are empty.
Smugglers who could once pay a small bribe to bring truckloads of chicken across the border are now hacking frozen birds into pieces and wedging wings and breasts into boxes, handbags or car doors. Rice is poured into jerrycans that are filled with a tiny amount of oil at the spout to disguise the contraband inside. At night, smugglers on motorbikes ride in convoys of 10 with boxes of chicken strapped across their shoulders.
“We go in teams because it’s safer,” said one smuggler who gave his name as Tunde. “If the customs officers come, we discard the chicken and scatter.”
Nigerian soldiers have expanded nighttime patrols of the land border and searches of small boats sailing along the waterways. On local news channels, uniformed customs officers parade around tables festooned with yellow jerrycans and boxes of smuggled rice, as if it were a drug bust.
The government claims the closure has been a roaring success, recording record revenue for rice and chicken arriving at sea ports that is taxed at 70%. “We are sharpening our skills and the odds are now against the smugglers,” said Joseph Atta, spokesman for Nigeria’s customs department.
The price of a single bird in Nigeria has soared more than 30% to as high as 1000 Naira, or $3.50, according to farmers, almost the same price as a ram. Dozens of Chicken Republic branches have been forced to turn customers away or offer their signature chicken with spicy jollof rice dish, without its key ingredient.
“We will just have to see if the government will budge… is this going to continue?” said Deji Akinyanju, the founder of Chicken Republic.
Yahuza Chicken, a popular spot set in a garden in Abuja, has begun to open at 1 p.m. instead of 8 a.m. due to lack of its core product. “We have never seen this kind of scarcity before,” said Abubakar Abdullahi, the manager. The store had to raise prices by almost 40%: “We are pleading with our customers to bear with the price hike.”
In Lagos, customers have begun swapping tips on which restaurant branches have stocks and where lines are longest. “When I found chicken last week, two people stopped me to ask which outlet I bought it from,” said Deborah Dede, a customer.
“Osun state has sold out of chicken,” said Adiobun Kolawole, a 25-year-old who in June set up his own chicken-breeding business in the southwest, Supreme Imperio Farms, to capitalize on the market dislocation. “I have 500 birds and they sell immediately, but even if I had 50,000 it wouldn’t be enough.”
Last year KFC ran out of chicken across the U.K. for 24 hours after problems with its supplier. “The chicken crossed the road, just not to our restaurants,” KFC’s U.K. office tweeted. In Nigeria, the company says it has an entirely domestic supply so it isn’t affected by the import ban and is rolling out its new Celebration Feast menu. The chain has increased prices. KFC has 16 stores in Nigeria. Chicken Republic has more than 60, and Mr. Bigg’s has 170.
More price surges are expected as Nigeria moves into the holiday season, where demand for poultry soars as Christian families from across the country traditionally slaughter and eat hens on Christmas day.
Grace Emmanuel, an Abuja resident, said she will have a different item at Christmas for the first time. “Chicken is fast becoming the exclusive preserve for the rich,” she said. “This year I think I will take a small amount of beef instead.”
Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@wsj.com and Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com
