Stakeholders in the cashew value chain, under the auspices of National Cashew of Nigeria, NCAN, have called on the Federal Government to stop the alleged illegal exports of cashews from the country by some foreigners and their Nigerian collaborators.
The association also stressed the need for government policies to encourage farmers to process cashews in Nigeria and generate revenue for the country.
Speaking with Sunday Vanguard on the issue, NCAN’s National President, Dr Joseph Ajanaku, described the foreigners who go to villages to buy the commodity in belts of the country producing cashews as saboteurs.
He said: “The popular price of a kilogramme of cashew in the market now is N1,800, while 1,000 kg which is a tonne is N1.8 million. I have made this complaint to the Nigerian Customs Service, NCS, and they cannot shy away from the fact that they don’t know that our containers, our cashews are leaving this country undocumented.
“And if they go undocumented, which means the money is not coming back to Nigeria, and it is at the detriment of the Nigerian cashew industry.
“These saboteurs who are foreigners are in the country going through the back door to buy cashews from farmers and they leave with them in containers mixed up with other items to the port and leave the country through the back door with their money.
“The way it is going, Nigeria will be in trouble in the near future. So, I am looking, and I think we should quickly draw the attention of our processors and farmers to this trend so that they don’t just rely on what I call one-time buyers who are buying now and will just come to the country and buy just one time and run away with them again. Currently, these one-time buyers are buying from our farmers at N2 million for 1,000kg.
“It is already affecting the country’s revenue. The money is not coming back to Nigeria. They are taking it as non-export proceeds, they are not filling the form M from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“The container is going to either China or it is going to Vietnam or India. My immediate recommendation and my solution is that our farmers should please consider and cooperate with us now for their future.
“The Nigerian Customs Service and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment are to be active, and should look at this area of people shipping cashew, not only cashew, other commodities out of Nigeria without documentation so these illegal activities in the cashew industry can be arrested.”
However, he said there is a need for cashews to be processed within the country and not to allow raw cashew nuts to leave the country, and that should be the policy of the government so farmers and processors would be encouraged to do more and also generate revenue for the country and also make reasonable profits.
“And the way we are going, if we don’t encourage processing now, we will run into a problem in the near future, and for us to encourage processing in the country is the core component that we are looking at, and the only way we have control over is what we have because we are the ones producing it, we should be able to have control over that one.
“We are trying to catalyze sustainability in the Nigerian cashew industry, and the only way we can do it is to encourage processing. To encourage processing and ask for investors to come into processing in Nigeria”, he said.
Courtesy: Vanguard Newspaper