Nigeria’s House of Representatives has sought for the review of all existing Cocoa/Commodity laws to develop a national cocoa policy and reposition the country as the largest producer in Africa.
This followed the adoption of a motion by Ademorin Kuye on the floor of the House on Tuesday in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
The House also mandated the Committee on Agricultural Production and Services to liaise with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to ensure the repositioning.
In his motion, Kuye noted that Nigeria was once a major player in cocoa production, being the second-largest producer in the world with 450,000 tons. He stated that cocoa was one of the country’s top foreign exchange earners in the 1950s and 1960s before the discovery of crude oil in commercial quantity in the country.
Kuye stated that the Nigerian cocoa market crashed in the 1990s as production fell to 170,000 tons and was impacted by the Structural Adjustment Policies of the late 1980s.
This, he said, included the dissolution of the Cocoa Marketing Board to liberalize cocoa marketing trade and allow improved cocoa output and pricing.
