ABUJA – Oxfam, an international confederation of 17 organisations worldwide to find solutions to poverty, has promised to support 10, 000 Nigerian cocoa farmers get international certification through its Cocoa-Dollar programme.
Oxfam’s Country Director in Nigeria, Dr ChiChi Aniagolu-Okoye, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday.
According to her, the certification will enable the farmers to sell their products at good prices at the international market.
“We have the Cocoa-Dollar programme in the South-West of Nigeria in which we are supporting cocoa farmers to be internationally certified.
“The certification would enable them to sell their cocoa at premium price at the international market.
“At the end of the programme, we will have over 10,000 farmers certified; already we have over 4,000 certified.’’
The country director urged the Federal Government to increase budgetary allocation to the agriculture sector to further support small-scale farmers, who produce the bulk of the nation’s food items.[eap_ad_2]
She said such allocation would help address storage issues, access to good roads and market that had bedevilled the sector for many years.
Aniagolu-Okoye stressed the need for community-based agri-businesses, saying that there was no community that could not be self-reliant in the country.
“If we have one factory in each community to processes what is produced, it would attract the private sector and the civil society,
“One community, one product, one storage facility; so that we do not end up where we have too much during the season and after three months, there is scarcity of the same produce.’’
Aniagolu-Okoye applauded the YouWin programme of the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, saying that it should be extended to the health, agriculture and education sectors.
She said the government needed to create a transparent way of harnessing ideas for development, stressing that the population of the country, if well-managed, would be a huge asset. (NAN)[eap_ad_3]