It is worthy of note that seventy five percent of the world’s cocoa comes from Africa, and cocoa production is a $100 billion business globally today.
However, the cocoa industry as practiced in Nigeria gives no addition to the cocoa value chain; all that happens is that we sell raw materials for a small fee, and then the finished products of cocoa are sold on the international markets, including even to us, at a much higher rat.
Nigeria is not bothering to tap into the international money spinner by elevating cocoa from a mere incidental cash crop because of the comfort of oil money. Some state governments and some private smallholdings do run cocoa farms but these are aged and moribund cocoa estates, in the main.
There is one Nigerian however who is making concerted efforts to galvanise Nigeria’s capacity in cocoa development such as to impact meaningfully on the national economy.
Oscar Ofuka is a political scientist and businessman who was one of the Cross Riverians given an appointment at the onset of the Ben Ayade administration.
He was quick to mention his bias for cocoa farming:- swiftly too, the Department of Cocoa Development was created ,and excised from the state Ministry of Agriculture, where hitherto, cocoa was just a neglected department in that ministry.
This challenging task saw Ofuka taking on the mantle of Special Assistant on Cocoa Development in the newly created department; which was now to be run in practice, as an agency – but without one single staff member!
But Ofuka is a ‘native’ farmer, his father had a cocoa farm in his day, likewise did his mother and he inherited both from them, as well as starting his own.
However, the old methods of farming are not really workable in today’s times, more so with trees then having a life span of twenty five years before becoming too old to yield.
The long gestation periods of ancient trees used to be the nightmare of the olden days, but with modern technology, today’s cocoa seedlings have a gestation period of just eighteen months, with high yield.
Cross River has four moribund cocoa estates. Ofuka is very methodical and started off by carrying out verification exercises of all existing cocoa estates in the Etung jungle where the estates flourished in the days of yore.
There is now the fresh issue of the Cocoa Allocation Committee which had recently allocated lands in the estate , but many of those who have leased the farms are themselves resistant to new cocoa farming methods and practices.
But Ofuka took a novel approach by first of all sensitizing the local public, and then asking for land from local donor communities in a state/local holding arrangement. Already, 3,800 seedlings have been planted in Akin – Osomba in what is called the Commercial Cocoa Development and Expansion Initiative Programme in Akampa Local Government Area.
Governor Ben Ayade has awarded a contract for the construction of an ultra-modern cocoa processing factory in Ikom which has capacity to process up to thirty thousand metric tonnes of cocoa.
In the world today, Ivory Coast comes first in cocoa production. Nigeria comes second. But that factory when completed will put a stop to the raw material (produce) sales and replace that with the sale of processed materials which would also be quality controlled. The factory would also have a multiplier effect on the economy with the addition of the long-desired industrialization. Job creation for the jobless, both at factory and as suppliers is another plus factor.
Ofuka’s department is currently creating a data base for every farmer.
He has also gone ahead to establish a Model Cocoa Nursery at the University of Calabar- purely for reseach purposes.
It never struck me that there was a National Award for Productivity (NPOM, the National Productivity Order of Merit Award) until a fortnight ago when I read the names of the award recipients in the news.
If there was any way in which recommendations for subsequent awards could be made, I would definitely put forward the name of Oscar Ofuka.
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