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Nigeria Cassava Growers Association (NCGA) has blamed shortage in cassava supply and the resultant increased cost of cassava by-products on herdsmen attacks on farms and lack of compensation to farmers.
Asides the herdsmen, there is also the frequent kidnapping of farm workers, forcing many farmers and investors in farm estates to stay off their farms.
In Lagos, farmers engaged in poultry, piggery, fishery, crops and vegetables, including watermelon, recently reportedly abandoned their farmlands in Epe area of the state over the activities of kidnappers.
“I am regretting relocating from the United States to invest in agriculture in Nigeria, says Nelson Akingboye, a farm owner in Epe, Lagos said.
According to Akingboye, he is watching his life’s saving invested in farming in Lagos going down the drain, as “some criminals that call themselves kidnappers keep coming to my farm to kidnap my workers. My tractors and farming equipment worth billions of naira are wasting away.”
“First time I paid N700, 000 ransom to get my workers back. Two weeks later they came to pick three, I paid N300, 000 with pleading to release them. I am fed up with this. I can’t cope, I can’t take it anymore,” laments the American returnee.
Segun Adewumi, NCGA’s president, said Thursday in Lagos that prices of cassava by-products such as `garri’, flour, and fufu’, starch and semolina had gone up, even as a 4-litre container of garri now sells as much as N1,200 while a 60kg bag of the commodity costs between N11,000 and N12, 500 at the Mushin Oloosa Market, depending on the quality. Garri is commonest food items in most households in Nigeria.
Adewumi said that attacks by herdsman had caused cassava farmers to stop in some parts of the country. He added that insurance firms did not compensate the affected farmers because policies taken by the farmers did not cover malicious damage to farms.
“As such, the farmers lost the produce to the attackers without compensation. It has been a very difficult time for cassava farmers in Nigeria because of the incessant attacks by herdsmen, who make it difficult for them to go to their farms.
“Farmers are afraid to go and cultivate; some farmers have lost their lives for venturing into the farms. All that the farmers had were lost to these attackers, and that really affected production of cassava,’’ Adewumi said.
According to him, the attacks led to shortage of cassava stems thereby causing limited availability of cassava for processing. Adewumi said that farmers who took loans from commercial banks were unable to pay back because their cassava farms had been eaten up by animals.
The NCGA president said that high demand for local production of ethanol and industrial starch also affected the cost of cassava products.
He added that high foreign exchange rate forced industries to go for locally-produced ethanol and industrial starch instead of imported ones. “Thus, there is more demand for cassava,’’ he said.
JOSHUA BASSEY with agency report
