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Cocoa Regeneration: Let’s Fight Political Farmers And Strengthen Cooperatives- Oladunjoye

First Bank Nigeria

 

BEING A SHORT REMARKS BY COMRADE TUNDE OLADUNJOYE AT THE COCOA FARMERS ROUNDTABLE CONFERENCE HELD AT MUSLIM COMMUNITY EVENTS CENTRE, IJEBU IMUSHIN, OGUN STATE, NOVEMBER 28, 2019.

I thank you immensely for inviting me to this roundtable conference with the theme “Repositioning Nigerian Cocoa Industry for the Prosperity of Cocoa Farmers and Production of Quality Beans Across Producing States in Nigeria”.

Joining your conference theme, I want to quickly say that the time is now. Cocoa is noted for prosperity. If Cocoa farmers are well taken care of, it will not only improve their productivity, but also prosperity and development of the national economy.

Undoubtedly, Cocoa is very important to the nation’s economy and has been playing contributory roles in revenue mobilization to the national purse. Cocoa was the major revenue earner for Nigeria in the 1950s, 1960s and 70s before Nigeria discovered oil boom that has, looking back now, turned to oil doom.

Though Nigeria is presently rated as the fourth largest cocoa producer in the world, however production in Nigeria has continuously dwindled and there is a very wide and increasing gap in the production outputs between Nigeria and other highly rated producing countries like Cote D’ivoire and Ghana.

I do not want to be talking about essence of cocoa farming and need to reposition the agricultural sector, what I want to do is to share my thoughts briefly on repositioning Cocoa farming.

• The Cocoa farmers must come together to form a united front against those I describe as political farmers. Year in year out, successive administrations announced billions of naira as support fund for various agricultural crops with little or near-absence effect on the original farmers.
• The Cocoa farmers should register into cooperatives and strengthen the existing ones. Funding from national and international agencies nowadays are better accessed through cooperatives and cluster groups. The farmers must come together to ensure that members who obtain loans are made to pay such loans back in time and fulfill all other contractual obligations .
• The officers of your association should not wait for government and its agencies. Rather they should approach government and its agencies to find out about emerging government initiatives, funding and potentials.
• The government on its own part should continue to provide enabling environment in terms of rural infrastructure, storage, marketing and other aspects of the cocoa value chain.
• Incentives and structured support must be provided for processing within the country to make farmers earn more from their crops.
• I must not end this brief remarks without imploring the members of Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria(CFAN), to practice their trade with total respect for government regulations and laws.

I thank you for your attention.

Tunde Oladunjoye
Ijebu Imushin, Ogun State.
November 28, 2019.

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