‘In Cameroon and Brazil they are already adding 20 percent cassava flour to their bread, only Nigerian factor is stopping Nigeria.’

Pastor Segun Adewunmi

Pastor Segun Adewunmi is the president  of National Cassava Association. In this interview on AIT Business Economy, spoke on the various uses of cassava as an industrial and food crop; in terms of food security and as biofortified crop because it is versatile (it can grow in several climatic conditions including areas that experience prolonged dry spells); how commercialization of high value products from it can be done at a small scale, with high quality cassava flour being the main product traded; that cassava has some major industrial products which are also  raw materials in the manufacture of some products; and finally, the possibility of cassava  triggering a revolution with nearly all parts of Nigeria can have industries based on the crop. Excerpts:

Hasn’t there been so much done on cassava like during the Obasanjo Administration?

Yes, as at that time I was the chairman technical committee, we met with the flour mills and the minister but then you see the planning, the execution was wrong and as that time the flour mills too were reluctant to come into it. We actually told them, ‘help us to cultivate cassava in high quantity’, they said ‘ok’. We remember there was a time the breweries were asked to cultivate maize and by the time they finished cultivating maize the federal government just open the gate for the import of barley, so they could not sell their maize. So they said they would not cultivate cassava but that they would agree with us, that they would accept all supply of cassava. Obasanjo could take decisions because he knew it would work, so to avoid problems they just gave the Cassava Project 500 million naira to support and then nobody could hold them again, but by the time they needed the cassava flour, there was no sufficient cassava flour to supply to them. You see, the cassava  we plant is subsistence, what am saying is that its not mechanized. It’s is not in large quantity, so there is no way we can use that for industrial purpose.

Where is the cassava bread? Did you ever eat it?

Of course, I ate a lot of cassava bread. What needs to be done is planning which I think the present government is doing.

How good is the cassava bread?

Very, very good. Better than the wheat bread. The white bread, when you add cassava, it’s very nutritious, and healthy.

 Would you be urging the President Buhari’s Administration to go back to Dr. Akinwumi’s Cassava Bread theory and factors?

Well, of course the present minister is so knowledgeable about all these things, he can tell you what level cassava bread has gotten to all over the world:  he will tell you that in Cameroon they are already adding 20%, in Brazil they are already adding 20%, you see it’s the Nigerian factor that has not allowed us succeed, and that’s been addressed by the present government. So, very soon we will apply pressure on government concerning cassava bread.

What are the factors that will make cassava bread project work in Nigeria, in terms of having it on the table and the street, like every other bread?

Yes, we have to have two programs in Nigeria for cassava cultivation. There has to be a program for food security, we know the money they are giving to farmers now may not be able to produce what the farmers themselves would eat or what other people would eat. I will tell you this: in Nigeria maybe we have 70% who are farmers, but the 70% cannot feed Nigeria, whereas in the US they have less than 5% people who are farmers feeding the whole of America and the rest of the world, while Nigeria has 70% farmers and we are importing 70% of our food needs, that is the area for farming. 

The supply for industrial purpose has to be  deliberately arranged, because we cannot use the cassava of the small holder farmers for industrial consumption, because the cost at which they produce will not be favorable for industry to use them. Nigeria is perhaps the highest producer of cassava, but unfortunately  cassava is more costly here than anywhere in the world, so our cassava cannot penetrate the international market, that’s the problem. It’s not enough in the sense that, cassava has 70% water, so you cannot make use of it. But the normal thing is that if there is going to be a cassava industry it should be sited  near to sources of cassava.

So, for example you don’t put the factory in Abuja, or Lagos, far from the farms?

There is one factory close to you here in Ibafo, which is supposed to mill 400 tons of cassava a day, and it cannot even mill  one ton, and  if it gets it, it wont be workable and fresh, because the cost at which the miller is going to buy it will not allow him to break even. If the factory is far from the farm, the cassava is already fermented and cannot be used, and then the transportation makes it very expensive, the cost of transporting it. Recently, we supplied some cassava to a factory and we discovered that the cost at which we harvested and transported the commodity had eaten up whatever we earned for the supply.

So what intervention do the cassava growers want?

The cassava growers want a plan, we want government to involve us in the planning. Let me give you an example, we have just gotten land all over the country. We got 9500 hectares in Ekiti state. Somebody was coming to invest, by putting his ethanol plant there, he wanted to take money from Nigerian banks, from Nigeria Investment Promotions Council, Nexim bank, the money he negotiated with them, by the time Naira fell, the money could no longer buy the machinery he was going to use and secondly there is one policy Nigeria needs to change before we prosper weather in cassava or any other crop cultivation.

 For example all over the world,  farmlands are used as collateral and security and loan, but in Nigeria it is not. This puts those of us investing in Nigeria at a disadvantage. For instance, we have the 9500 hectares  farm, by the time they do the valuation they will get two billion naira  but we cannot put it forward as a collateral, because the Nigerian banks will not take it, and people who are supposed to invest in Nigeria are relocating to Ghana, because of unfavorable environment for this kind of investment. So what the Nigerian government should do is let’s sit down and then discuss our experiences, and which I am sure the present minister is working on.