Nigeria cocoa still valuable – University don

Professor Peter Okuneye, a renowned researcher and scholar in the field of agricultural and environmental economics at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), has debunked allegations that the value of the nation’s cocoa does not meet international standards.  Rather, the don noted that the quality of cocoa being produced in the country remained one […]

Professor Peter Okuneye, a renowned researcher and scholar in the field of agricultural and environmental economics at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), has debunked allegations that the value of the nation’s cocoa does not meet international standards. 
Rather, the don noted that the quality of cocoa being produced in the country remained one of the best in the world. 
Okuneye made a case for reliance on cocoa and other tree crops, which were a major foreign exchange earner for Nigeria in the 1960s and 1970s. 
He said that in a research he conducted, which bordered on the environmental impact of tree crops under the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) sponsored by the United Nations Empowerment Programme (UNEP), he studied the trade policies, level of production and the environmental effects to determine if farmers should continue to use chemicals and what would be the effect on the level of production, soil and consumption. 
He said: “We found out that what the international organisations were saying, that Nigerian cocoa had been so polluted because of some chemicals, is not true. We were lucky that during that period, the International Cocoa Organisation wanted to put a ban on Nigerian cocoa to the tune of about 600,000 metrics tones. But that study, which we presented to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), opened the eyes of the International Cocoa Organisation to the fact that it is not our own production that has led to increase in the chemicals but where they stored the cocoa. So Nigerian cocoa was therefore accepted right on the shore, rather than after storage by the International Cocoa Organisation in London and that assisted us to increase the level of production.”