By Jimoh Babatunde
Dr. Peter Aikpokpodion is a plant breeder with the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, an expert in cocoa and the leader of the cocoa transformation team. Recently, he took time out to explain  plans for the growth of cocoa in the country as the team met with  chief executives of some organisations in the cocoa industry recently. Excerpt.

Why is this Transformation Agenda coming at this time?

As part of the government’s transformation agenda in the Agricultural sector, you know that Cocoa is one of the key areas which government is really focusing on at this time.  You know that cocoa is so important to the economy of Nigeria.

As I speak today, cocoa is the single largest non-oil foreign exchange earner for Nigeria, which means apart from petroleum, which of course makes the bulk of our source of revenue, cocoa is the next single commodity.

So that shows how important cocoa is to our economy and even before the oil boom, for the southern part of the country, the South-West in particular, cocoa is the mainstream of the Nigerian economy.

For quite some time, agriculture has been neglected and the cocoa industry also by extension, has suffered from that neglect. But at this time, government is already putting a lot of focus on cocoa in order to bring back the glory of cocoa, to enhance income generation/foreign exchange earnings through agriculture.

And also I can tell you that Nigeria used to account for 18 per cent of world cocoa but now, we are only down to just seven per cent, whereas a country like Cote d’Ivoire, that was nowhere, is still accounting for one-third of world cocoa.

Ghana, through the effort of its government, has also risen to accounting for almost 20 per cent of world cocoa but Nigeria is down to just seven per cent.

So we need transformation and that is why at this time, the minister has made it part of his priority programme to bring back cocoa and increase the country’s market share, earn foreign exchange and create about 390,000 jobs.

When is the initiative starting?

Well, the initiative has started, people are working to make sure the right things are done and people are mobilised so that we can channel our resources and intervention to the right places.

We actually have a target for this year that by the end of the harvest season, around October-December, we should be able to start to see the result, to increase production of cocoa in Nigeria.

What number of farmers are you reaching out to?

As much as possible, we want to see how this programme can touch as many cocoa farmers as we have. But the Federal Government will be working with the state and local governments and the private sector because this is a public-private partnership which we are using here to target the farmers.

While cocoa is produced in the southern part of Nigeria, we are putting our target  towards South-West, South- East, South-South and some areas in the North-Central part of the country would also be included with the aim of reaching out to hundreds of thousands of cocoa farmers.

In naira and kobo, what will this cost the Federal Government?

I cannot tell you precisely, my Minister will be able to give the figure.

Sir, will this not be another programme that may not see the light of the day?

From the very outset, the farmers are put at the centre stage in this initiative. Like the programme of the government in terms of enhancing support, whatever support the government is giving is to put it directly into the hands of the farmers. There is one thing we call e-register for the registration of the farmer, the location of the farm and other necessary things.