Group’s Five-Year Plan To Make Nigeria Largest Cocoa Producer By 2022

To position Nigeria as the world’s largest producer of cocoa by the year 2022, the Cocoa Association of Nigeria (CAN) is unfolding a five-year plan.
Sayina Riman, National President of the association, told Independent that CAN plans to implement the programme from May-June this year when the planting season will commence.
He said starting the implementation would help Nigeria regain its status as the first or at worst leave it as the second largest producer in the world.
Regaining Nigeria’s Status
“We are coming up with national cocoa plan, a five-year national cocoa plan that will start its implementation from this year. This year our planting season will start from May- June so the implementation plan will start from this year; if we start the implantation plan, we might regain our first or second largest producers’ status in the world”, Riman said.
He further disclosed that the association has started the development programme without any input of any government, stressing that early this year the private sector under CAN planted about 4 million high-breed seedlings.
“We have started the development programme without any input of any government we did it with CAN and its stakeholders; this is why the minister of agriculture should believe that the process should be driven by the private sector and until it is driven by the private sector we will have the recurring decimal of the past where we spend so much money, without anything to show for it,” he added.

POSTED BY:OPUOMONI PRIYE
DATE:04/25/2017