Nigeria’s dismal ranking among cocoa producing countries mirrors decades of government’s failed policies in agriculture that has currently left the country’s economy firmly in straitened circumstances because of overreliance on one product – oil. Figures released by the International Cocoa Organisation place the country seventh, down from the fourth position it occupied last year based on revised projections for the year. Ahead of Nigeria are such countries as Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia and Cameroon.
This is clearly the outcome of years of criminal neglect of the agro sector and its enduring prospects for sustainable wealth and job creation in preference for the quick, but ephemeral nature of oil wealth. Prior to striking the first oil well in Oloibiri, a modest, remote community in Bayelsa State in 1956, Nigeria had shown great potential as a country with a viable agriculture-based economy, especially cash crops such as groundnuts, palm produce, cocoa, rubber and cotton, among others. By independence in 1960, the country ranked indisputably as the leading producer and exporter of palm produce and was second only to Ghana in cocoa production.
While palm produce sustained the economy of the then Eastern Region, cocoa was the mainstay of Western Region’s economy, even as the Northern Region anchored its own on groundnuts, cotton, hides and skin, and Mid-Western Region was a major player in rubber and timber. Fishing, done along the coastal stretch and the major rivers, was enough to sustain local consumption. The level of development among the different regions, driven by intense competition, far outstripped what obtains today. The Cocoa House, a showpiece of architectural wonder at the time of its completion in Ibadan, the Western Regional capital, in 1965, symbolised the prosperity that came with cocoa business. It was then reputed to be the tallest building, not just in Nigeria, but in tropical Africa.
With earnings from these different cash crops, the regions were able to pay taxes to the central government. In other words, the regions sustained the Federal Government and not the other way round as it currently obtains, where states go cap-in-hand to Abuja every month to collect allocation from oil money. The destruction of our federal structure by the military adventurers from 1966 ended all that. But with the crash in global oil prices and massive destruction of oil installations by criminals in the Niger Delta, leading to the current recession, the danger of running a monolithic economy is now dawning on managers of the country’s economy.
Over the years, the government’s lack of interest in agriculture and the volatility of the oil market had led many experts to warn of the need to diversify the economy. But this is a warning that was never heeded. The wise thing that should have been done over the years was to insulate the agro-economy from the toxic oil money. Yet, despite the obvious neglect, cocoa has over the years, shown its potential to keep the economy going in the absence of oil. For instance, the crop continued for many years to be the second highest foreign exchange earner, next only to oil.
Ideally, now that the oil money is no longer flowing in gushes, this should have been the time to fall back on Nigeria’s cocoa to bridge the gap in the much needed foreign currency earnings. While Ivory Coast, the country that came from behind to take over the lead in cocoa production and export now boasts about 1.3 million metric tonnes of cocoa – and is targeting 1.8 million in the next few years – Nigeria, according to figures released by ICCO, now has a projected figure for this year of 190,000 metric tonnes. This is abysmally poor. The successors of pioneering South-West leaders have been short-sighted by failing to promote cocoa production.
Apart from the neglect of cocoa farming by the political leaders, due in the main to the discovery of oil in commercial quantity, another major blow that cocoa faced was in the crash in commodity prices of the 1980s and the fact that the producing countries had no say in the fixing of the prices of their produce. While manufacturers of chocolate, among the main importers of cocoa beans, continue to review prices of their products upwards from time to time, cocoa farmers and exporters have no say in how much their produce should cost, which is bizarre.
Also, due to lack of investment, many cocoa trees have been ageing and dying, just as ageing and dying farmers are not replaced by their children in the business. Many farmers and exporters have had to abandon cocoa business because the Nigerian beans are being lowly priced due to their perceived low quality, deemed unsuitable for chocolate manufacturing. The immediate reason for the fall in production in Nigeria has, however, been traced to drought which saw the yield crash from 350,000MT two years ago to the projected figure of 190,000MT, a far cry from the target of 500,000MT set for the year.
With global sales of chocolate confectioneries put at over $100 billion, according to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Nigeria has every reason to invest heavily in cocoa farming and export. This is even more so that, for the first time, cocoa beans demand now outstrips supply. Apart from chocolate, cocoa is also useful in the production of cocoa powder, liquor, soft and alcoholic drinks, animal feeds, cocoa butter, jams, marmalades and other cosmetics.
Successive South-West governors have failed their people over the years by allowing the region’s cash cow to wither away. Now is the time for innovative thinking. There is no better time for the country to return to the golden years of cocoa farming and the growing of other cash crops than now, especially with the availability of improved breeds that take much shorter times to mature, and with increased yields. If Indonesia that reportedly planted no cocoa before 1980 is now ahead of Nigeria in the production of the crop, then the revival of its cultivation is possible within a short period of time. According to the immediate past Minister of Agriculture and current President of African Development Bank, Akinwunmi Adesina, more than 140 million seedlings of high-yielding varieties were distributed to farmers in 2014. Instead of four to five years, the new varieties can mature in 18 to 24 months. More of such varieties should be brought out and many young school-leavers, especially in the South-West which has comparative advantage in cocoa cultivation, should be encouraged to go into cocoa farming.
There should be a deliberate government policy to develop a cocoa industry to the extent that chocolates could be produced locally and exported abroad as finished products, rather than exporting the raw cocoa beans. That way, more value is added and jobs are created.
