By Dele Sobowale

“We don’t have enough cassava to make…….

Even a fool, in Nigeria, now knows that the last thing anyone should believe is anything announced by the Federal Government of Nigeria, its Ministers, agencies and especially the President’s Special Advisers on Media and Publicity. When Abati or Okupe appear on television, people switch to other channels.

Nothing good can come out of listening to deliberate falsehood. Meanwhile, the President, on whose behalf this show of shamelessness was going on pretended not to listen. Still ringing in our ears are the assurances given by the Presidency that Mrs Patience Jonathan, the wife of our President, was vacationing, somewhere (undisclosed naturally) in Europe, after the hard work of campaigning for her husband and undertaking other busybody assignments.

Well, Patience, I love her, had blown the lie in their faces – including that of the President who allowed his staff to spread falsehood as public announcement. Anybody, or group, who could concoct a colossal lie that a woman, “dead for seven days” was having a swell time, at the French Riviera, can no longer expect to be believed. They might as well stop talking to us because nothing they say will ever again be believed.

One Minister, whose pronouncements have almost driven me up a wall is the Federal Minister of Agriculture – Dr Adewunmi. His pronouncements about our agricultural productivity, last year, is similar to that of those who told us that a woman, who was kept alive by machines and artificial oxygen, was dancing the night away in Dubai. Adewunmi, as we know, is a great champion of cassava bread.

Almost two years ago, he persuaded the President, who can be persuaded by anybody speaking excellent English; especially in borrowed accents, that substitution of cassava for wheat, for bread baking, within two years, was a feasible venture.

That was in 2011. And to demonstrate the soundness of the proposal, he had the folks at UTC Nigeria Plc, whose shares I bought more than twenty years ago, at 50 kobo a share, without a kobo of dividend to show for it, to partner with the Ministry in baking a sample for Aso Rock.

File Photo: President Goodluck Jonathan presenting the 40% Cassava flour-baked bread

The track record of UTC Nigeria Plc offers anything, but comfort to anyone familiar with it. The share bought at 50 kobo in 1976 have crawled up to 78 kobo last week – after almost 37 years. The NESTLE shares bought at about the same time, at about the same price now go for N868.

That should tell Adewunmi, the President, who got snowed under half-truths and Nigerians, a lot about the technical advisers on this project.  By any standard, imaginable, UTC Nigeria Plc is a loser. A major reason its shares has been languishing in the basement for years has been the company’s lack of sustainable performance in anything.

There is probably no single best-selling product or brand in the Nigerian market for which UTC can claim credit. For one thing, its distribution network is extremely limited for a mass consumer product reaching into every corner of Nigeria. UTC is simply the wrong partner to select for what at best will turn out to be a long-term campaign.

The gospel of cassava bread, as preached by Dr Adewunmi was, in actual fact, good and original. Unfortunately for Nigerians, starting with President Jonathan, the part that was good was not original; and the part that was original was not good (to paraphrase Dr Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English lexicographer).

IBB’s government had the patent for introducing cassava bread to Nigeria and the Federal Institute of Industrial Research at Oshodi, FIIRO, was the technical partner at the time. Perhaps, if Adewunmi and his gang at the Ministry of Agriculture had asked for a brief history of cassava bread in Nigeria, we would not be writing this piece today.

Cassava bread, as a substitute for wheat bread, failed for a number of reasons – virtually all of which are still present today. Food technology is both a simple and a complex subject. But, any average person can understand the underlying factors involved in baking wheat or cassava bread and the conditions under which each can succeed.

This is not a matter of politics; it is a matter of science. The problem is, when a scientist finds himself in a political role, he also finds it difficult to remain faithful to science. Great politicians, or political appointees, are liars; great scientists are never.

Like accountants forging figures or dull students engaging in wuru-wuru to the answer, Adewunmi and UTC, must have ensured that their cassava bread was well fortified with the right enzymes, sugar and loads of butter and served smoking hot. Without meeting all the conditions stated above, what the President and the other members of the Federal Executive Council would have been eating, would have tasted more like brick.

Cold cassava bread is as hard as rock. My personal experience in Sales and Marketing, covering the first twenty-one years of my working life, and the last eight in food and beverages sector, have taught me that one of the most difficult changes to get people to adopt is change in taste.

The mouth is the gateway to the digestive system. And, as one NESTLE, S.A, book reminded us, “food means nutrition; but, first, it has to be eaten”. In its natural state, cassava bread tastes awful compared to wheat bread – unless specially prepared like the stuff given to the President.