There was perceived apathy by the Federal Government   towards the  Cocoa sub sector of the agricultural industry since 2007 as the operations of the National Cocoa Development Committee (NCDC) created by the Obasanjo’s administration was almost grounded.

Erelu Olusola Obada

But today  that might be a thing of the past as the committee is set to hold another National Cocoa day in Ilorin, Kwara State, next week.

The Chairperson of the National Planning Committee for the 2010 Cocoa Day and the Chairman, Alternative Uses of Cocoa, a sub_committee of the National Cocoa Development Committee,  Erelu Olusola Obada, the Deputy Governor of Osun State   during the week spoke with Jimoh Babatunde on the need for diversification of the country’s economy towards commercial cash crop farming particularly Cocoa among other issues affecting cocoa. Here is an excerpt of the interview.

How would you describe the state of Nigeria’s cocoa industry?
I think it was in year 2004 when we had the first Cocoa rebirth, a lot of sensitization has taken place and the need for Nigeria to embrace cocoa production and marketing has taken roots.

Prior to this, you will remember that the cocoa industry in Nigeria has more or less gone into comatose, but because of the activities of the National Cocoa Development Committee, the Nigerian cocoa farmers have been reawakened to coca production.

This encouragement came by way of giving them improved high yield hybrid seedlings, agro chemicals like fungicides, herbicides used for the production of cocoa.

We also have the cocoa event annually, the first was held in Ibadan, then Calabar, Osun and Akure, and this next one is holding in Ilorin, Kwara state from the 22nd of July to the 24th, we are all looking forward to it and we want to emphasise the specific importance of cocoa to the economic transformation of this country.
What is the importance of cocoa to our economic development?
Let us take a look at oil as a resource we depend on, cocoa is the second largest foreign exchange earner for Nigeria after oil, why could we not give cocoa prominence as we give to oil, when you look at the revenue generated from oil, why can’t we have alternative sources of revenue apart from oil?

Why depend solely on oil? Why can’t we diversify the economy of this country and earn more for our country? I believe we should give cocoa half of the attention that we have given to oil in this country  because we  are talking about production, processing by adding value to this cocoa before exporting it and I believe that the sky is our limit if we can just get it right.

The NCDC is doing its best,  but we want the government to give cocoa the required prominence in the scheme of things.

How would you assess the achievements of NCDC since its establishment?
I believe we have done very well in the past years.

There is no doubt that there has been a slow down but things are picking up again. Like I told you earlier, before the advent of the NCDC, cocoa production had gone very low, at that time we were producing about 100,000 metric tonnes of cocoa, but today, the story is different since the NCDC distributed the high yield hybrid seedlings to the farmers, which is now gestating.

I believe that production figure would have gone much higher. I believe by now we should be producing about 350,000 to 400,000 metric tonnes, but our target in the short term is to hit about 600,000 metric tonnes and eventually to rank first and have Ivory Coast coming behind us.

Today Ivory Coast is number one followed by Ghana and Nigeria. We are so lucky in this country, God has blessed us with  arable lands that we can plant our cocoa and I believe that if we take it seriously, we should get there.

When NCDC was inaugurated, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo set a target of 600,000, what was responsible for the laid back in achievement?
Like I said a while, the programmes of the NCDC were disrupted in the past two years, which means that we were not able to give to farmers the seedlings and agro chemicals like herbicides and fungicides we used to give them for some reasons, but I think that there is now a renewed interest with the current minister of agriculture, at least he understands the importance of cocoa’s role in Nigerian economy and he has taken every step to ensure that cocoa farmers are happy and cocoa production also increases, so we are back on track.

Why can’t we add value to cocoa we are producing in the country?
Yes, we can, the problem we are having is that those who buy our cocoa preferred to buy the beans only, they don’t want the processed cocoa like the cocoa butter and so on, because they also have processing factories in their countries.

They try to discourage Nigerian cocoa processors from exporting their processed cocoa and that is why we have a very high tariff on processed cocoa while the cocoa beans attract a low tariff in a bid to discourage us from sending processed cocoa to them.

They want to put their own cocoa processing factories to work, that is why we are saying we need to look inward and consume our cocoa ourselves, increase production, add value to it, process, export and we can also use the processed cocoa in Nigeria to manufacture so many things.

There is a saying that heaven helps those who help themselves, I think we need to get away from the era of cocoa consumers abroad fixing cocoa prices  while the farmers get little or nothing irrespective of whatever  input that has gone into the production of the cocoa here.

How do you think Nigeria can utilise cocoa to facilitate the development of small and Medium Scale Enterprises?
A couple of years back, we held a big programme at Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria on the commercialization and popularization of products manufactured from cocoa, many of this research findings have remained  on the shelve for too long,  so we wanted to bring them out in order to see what they can do with cocoa, because we can build a viable, viral SMEs around cocoa.

There are so many things you can do with cocoa, let us start from the pod, which is the casing of the cocoa bean, you can use it to make animal feed and the bean can be used to make chocolate, cocoa drink, cocoa powder which is very beneficial to human health.
We have been canvassing the benefit of coca to the body. You can also use cocoa butter to produce hair  cream. The opportunities in cocoa are limitless for you to create wealth from it right from production, processing to export.

Don’t you think that venturing into Public Private Partnership between the government and the private sector will engender the development of the cocoa industry?

That is the goal we want to achieve, we want to move cocoa production away from the subsistence farmers, who just plant to make enough money just to send their children to school and so on to real a large scale production. It will be a good idea if we can have this PPP.

Government in the state can clear vast hectares of land in partnership with private companies so that when they now harvest their cocoa after about two or three years instead of the old ten years, they can make a lot of money, because they would have increase production, have more to process and be able to find buyers abroad and we will have enough to consume locally, that is the goal we are trying to achieve.

Although, we have a lot of cooperative society, whereby a lot of people come together and farm and share whatever they get from it at the end of the day. For instance, here in Osun state, we have what we called Kokodowo Cooperative  while in Ondo state , Ile_Oluji we have Tonikoko.

Have you put into consideration the fact that many people do not want to go into farming any longer?
There was a committee called successors generation of farmers set up in a bid to attract the younger ones into farming, like in my state Osun, we have Osun State Agricultural Association for young graduate who have no jobs. We take them to the farm because we have a lot of farm settlement in Osun and partner the extension workers who train them in all kinds of areas of agriculture, while they are doing that we still pay them some stipends, after a year or two of graduation , those with like_minds will come together to form themselves into cooperatives in different areas and we give them some money to establish their own farms.
So many programmes are on ground now in various areas of Nigeria to attract the young ones back into agriculture, because agriculture as practice in all countries has brought great wealth to those farmers in those countries. I believe if the government policy is right, a lot of people will move into agriculture again.

What is the new thing we are expecting at the forthcoming annual cocoa day?
On the new thing we are expecting at the event, we want people to know that after oil it is cocoa and we should give enough attention to it, if we can devote so much time and resource to oil production, why can’t we give cocoa about half the attention we give to cocoa, because it will aid the development of SMEs and consequently the nation’s economy in general.