By Chinyere Anyanwu [email protected]
Cocoa farmers, united under the Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, have lamented the chronic underfunding of the country’s cocoa industry.
In an open letter released yesterday, Adeola Adegoke, Director General of the Cocoa Roundtable Initiative (CORI) and National President of the Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, appealed to President Bola Tinubu to prioritise funding for the cocoa sector, warning that failure to do so could undermine the current progress and prospects of the nation’s cocoa farmers.
“Mr. President should not forget that one of his promises during his campaign was to provide boards for some critical agricultural commodities which will not be involved in buying but developing and regulating such sectors of which cocoa should take preference as a leading foreign exchange provider and internal revenue generation in the country.
“We believe the case of cocoa had been settled with the setting-up of the National Cocoa Management Committee but has been so far hampered in operations in the last two years due to lack of funding to perform her statutory regulatory responsibilities and her legal status to transform into a board through the National Assembly’s legal backing,” he said.
He stated that inadequate funding has consistently hindered the committee’s ability to effectively carry out its responsibilities, including quality control, contract arbitration to protect investors’ funds and monitoring and remediation of child labour.
“It is our firm belief that Nigeria is on a path to greatness despite the excruciating economic consequences of your administration’s reform which some people referred to as T-Pain but we rather see it as T-Gain and T-Sustainability.
“However, Cocoa Roundtable Initiative whose mission is to work towards the sustainability of the cocoa economy of Nigeria and in particular, the transformation of the livelihood of our cocoa farmers through rural prosperity, is bringing the attention of President Bola Tinubu to the need to fund and transform the National Cocoa Management Committee saddled with the responsibility of regulating the cocoa economy of Nigeria into a board,” the CORI director general stressed.
He called on the president to allocate funding to the National Task Force on EUDR to safeguard the industry’s $1 billion investment, while also providing subsidies for cocoa farmers’ inputs to enhance their productivity. This, he noted, would not only improve farmers’ incomes but also generate increased revenue for governments at all levels in 2025.
The letter highlighted that the cocoa sector’s performance over the past year in generating foreign exchange and securing top earnings in the non-crude oil sector should not be underestimated. Citing a report from the NBS, it noted that cocoa exports surged by 304 percent in the first quarter of 2024, driven by increased demand and a weakened naira.
The letter also noted that Nigeria’s cocoa exports, which made up 42.4 percent of the N1.04 trillion in agricultural exports for the period, rose dramatically to N438.7 billion in the first quarter of 2024, compared to N108.6 billion in the corresponding period of 2023.
“The good prospect of this development in the sector is in the stabilisation of the price of cocoa which is not less than N10 million per metric tonne in the last one year.
“Also, NCMC was put in place in August 2022 by the past administration due to pressures mounted by the smallholder cocoa farmers of Nigeria under Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria that condemned the total free market of the cocoa industry without regulation in consideration of the sector’s contribution to the economy of Nigeria.
“The challenges confronting the smallholder cocoa farmers include low production, post-harvest challenges which affect quality and the need to come up with the necessary framework on EUDR implementation which poses future challenges to our global cocoa market future.
“We urge Mr. President, governors of cocoa producing states and lovers of the Nigerian cocoa industry to look into the funding and legal framework support to NCMC through the National Assembly in order to save the industry from regulatory lapses that could undermine the present gains of high price of cocoa beans that is not less than N10 million per metric tonne, that our cocoa farmers are currently enjoying, and Nigeria’s determination to become the highest cocoa producing country in West Africa before 2027,” Adegoke added.