Mr. Dimeji Filani said that some cocoa growers in Nigeria deliberately heaped sands and pebbles into bags of cocoa to gain advantage of weight, and this he noted that this was causing buyers to reject cocoa beans exported from the country.
Armajaro Nigeria Limited had earlier offered free training on good farming techniques to boost yield to the farmers. While advising farmers against such unscrupulous practices, Filani urged them to always ensure proper fermentation of their cocoa beans and to dry the seeds very well to attract buyers. “Nigerian cocoa is no longer sought after in the world market because it is dirty.
Some of our farmers add dirty things including sand and pebbles to their cocoa to gain weight but this is causing buyers to reject the cocoa from our country,” he said. He explained that the company was offering free training and giving out inputs to cocoa growers in order to increase production in the country. According to him, 200,000 tonnes of cocoa was produced in Nigeria annually, adding that the company intended to increase it to 300,000 in 2013.
He appealed to the Federal Government as well as governments in all the cocoa producing states to increase their investment in cocoa production while giving them the assurance that they could generate more fund from cocoa production than what they had thought.
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