Tomato ‘Ebola’ Outbreak: Agronigeria Holds Town Hall Meeting

Following the outbreak of Tuta absoluta-the scourge currently consuming Nigeria’s tomato crop, AgroNigeria – the mouthpiece of Nigeria’s Agriculture – convened a stakeholders’ Town Hall Meeting to address the issue in order to find a lasting solution to it.

The meeting which took place at the conference hall of Chimande Agricultural Seeds Nigeria Limited, Kano, yesterday, was attended by major players in the Nigerian tomato value chain as well as journalists from major media house in the country.



Stakeholders at the meeting were unanimous in expressing concerns that the tomato plague had come to the country unnoticed, and had subsequently caught both the farmers and the government unawares.
More troubling to the Meeting is the fact that the Federal Government is, at the present time,  oblivious of the presence and spread of the highly-chemical resistant pest christened ‘Tomato Ebola’ by the farmers.

Speaking at the meeting, the convener and Editor-in-Chief of AgroNigeria Magazine, Barrister Richard-Mark Mbaram noted that Nigerian tomato is under siege and that steps need to be taken to prevent a re-enactment of what happened in Sudan, where it took that country about three years to recover from the crop disease. According to him, an aggressive and well-coordinated attack needs to be launched on the scourge before it wipes out Nigeria’s tomato crop. “AgroNigeria, knowing what this portends for the health and livelihoods of Nigerians, has committed a large part of its resources to this issue and will continue to engage till this scourge is arrested” Mbaram stated.



In his intervention, the Chief Executive Officer of Chimade Seed Nigeria Limited, Alhaji Yusuf Ado Kibiya, noted that the level of destruction caused by the plague was unquantifiable. “The largest percentage of tomato is produced here in Kano and Jigawa. We produce about 75 per cent of tomato consumed in Nigeria. As we speak farmers are counting their losses due to this scourge.



When asked to state the worth of the damage, Kibiya simply said, We cannot quantify the amount of loss recorded.”
Stakeholders from the Kano State Government, agro-chemical companies also attended the forum, stating their commitments to tackle the scourge.