Stakeholders seek funding of NCMC to boost Nigerian cocoa sector

STAKEHOLDERS in the cocoa production sector have pleaded with the Federal Government for support in funding and transformation of the National Cocoa Management Committee (NCMC), into board, funding of the National Task Force on EUDR and subsidised input support to the cocoa farmers, to enhance cocoa production and productivity in the new year.

The plea was contained in an open letter addressed to President Bola Tinubu, and signed by the Director-General of Cocoa Roundtable Initiative (CORI), Comrade Adeola Adegoke, who is also the National President, Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria (CFAN).

The reads in part: “Your Excellency, we believe the case of cocoa had been settled with the setting-up of the NCMC, but funding has continuously affected the operations of the Committee in the area of quality control, contract arbitration to safe guide investors, funding, child labour monitoring and remediation, deforestation and afforestation programme, capacity building and development, cocoa and agroforestry intensification, cocoa communities rural infrastructures, post-harvest challenges, traceability, climate change, monitoring and evaluation of various sustainability projects and activities, among others.

“Mr. President, it is interesting to note that the performance of the cocoa sector in the last one year in the generation of FX and top earnings in the non-crude oil sector cannot be taken for granted. According to the NBS report, the cocoa exports rose by 304 percent in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024 due to higher demand and weak naira.

“The country’s cocoa exports, which accounted for 42.4 percent of the N1.04tr agricultural exports for the period, surged to N438.7b in the first quarter of 2024 from N108.6b in the corresponding period of 2023. And the good prospect of this development in the sector is in the stabilisation of the price of cocoa, which is not less than N10m per metric ton in the last one year,” he said.

Adegoke disclosed that the NCMC was put in place in August 2022 by the past administration owing to pressures mounted by the smallholder cocoa farmers under Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria (CFAN) that condemned the total free market of the cocoa industry without regulation in consideration of the sector’s contribution to the economy, challenges confronting the smallholder cocoa farmers due to low production, productivity – post-harvest challenges, which affect quality and the need to come up with the necessary framework on EUDR implementation, which poses future challenges to the global cocoa market future.

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