‘There’s a lot of politics in cocoa business’

With sudden investments in vast agricultural projects, is the state changing focus from tourism to agriculture?No.  We are not changing focus from tourism to agriculture. Actually, the focus is still on tourism. But if you look at the 7-point agenda of Governor Liyel Imoke’s government, agriculture is still number one. The governor himself is very […]

With sudden investments in vast agricultural projects, is the state changing focus from tourism to agriculture?
No.  We are not changing focus from tourism to agriculture. Actually, the focus is still on tourism. But if you look at the 7-point agenda of Governor Liyel Imoke’s government, agriculture is still number one. The governor himself is very passionate about it.  Education and tourism feature prominently, too. But agriculture remains the focal point. This is so because of the need for food security.  Without food, you find out that no government will be able to secure its people. That is why we place agriculture as number one. We are shifting focus from a ministry that used to produce things.
Is the state able to sustainably run agriculture?
Government cannot solely drive agriculture very well.  The state governor himself has continually insisted on the need to have private concerns take over the estates. That is the reason we are trying to privatise some agriculture estates in the state by bringing in private businesses and investors.
We want our agriculture sector to be private sector-driven. With the private sector involvement, we will be certain of sustaining any projects or programmes. We are already assisting our farmers to become agro-entrepreneurs.  We want to assist them to produce more and to increase their livelihoods in the rural areas. That is the reason, as you can see, government has also sunk in much to construct new and rehabilitate over 1000 kilometre roads in the hinterlands since this government came to power.  These will enable our farmers to bring their produce to urban centres and market places.  
In collaboration with your government, federal government plans to establish cassava and cocoa processing plants in the state.  When will this materialize?
The cocoa plant is a private sector plan. The ones that belong to federal government are the rice and cassava plants. Before March next year, the cassava plant will be up in Obubra area of the state while the rice plant should also be operational next year. All these would be private sector driven. Federal government has gotten a loan from Bank of Industry in China.
Chinese government has procured the equipment but a private sector man will come and run it and pay back the money. We in turn will engage 5000 youth-farmers to raise feed-stocks for the rice and cassava plants. We have vast clusters of rice farms in the central parts of the state.  Our people are still taking their rice produce to Abakiliki in Ebonyi state to process.  That won’t continue any more once the rice plants are installed in Itighidi and Bansara.
What are you doing to harness the vast potentials of cocoa massively available in the state?
We have a number of investors like OLAM and Kilimanjaro who are coming in strong in Etung, Ikom and Boki where we have vast cocoa plantations. Our intention is really to have the cocoa estate run by private firms because our cocoa which is the best in the world is still very cheap. You see, there is a lot of politics in cocoa business. If you are not part of the cocoa cartel even if you produce the liquor and you are the best, you won’t have a market.
So the big cocoa players and suppliers must be part of your consideration else they will frustrate you. And to build a cocoa plant in Cross River state we would need at least N1.5 billion. I think that there is no individual yet that has such money not even the state cannot afford that alone. We have approached Dangote Group and others but they are not interested because of the politics. Companies like OLAM and Kilimanjaro have the money to establish the plant but they don’t want to.
Small-time cocoa merchants in the state are complaining of over-taxation by the state government. What are you doing to address the issue?
I don’t believe so. People complain too much. In the past 10 years or so, people have been coming to take away our cocoa almost free of charge while our own farmers were making nothing.  We needed to do something.
Even though we have cocoa, we do not have big time players who can cope with the global cocoa politics. We have tried to encourage our people to rise above just being an LBA and small time suppliers and become real merchants. The tax is rather on the big time merchants who do not want to set up plants to process the cocoa here in the state, preferring instead to take it to Lagos.  So, we said if they don’t want to do it here they should pay only N5,000 per ton of cocoa they take out of the state. Perhaps this is what trickles down. They are paying so as to go to Lagos because there are a number of companies ready to buy.