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Nigeria misses out on $275m cocoa revenue as low value addition takes toll
... risks losing spot on cocoa rankings as flood, disease cut output JOSEPHINE OKOJIE
I
f local processors had fully processed all of Nigeria’s cocoa, the country’s secondlargest export earner after oil, into butter and cake before exporting in 2018, an additional $275 million could have been created by the players in the value chain, BusinessDay’s calculations show. Africa’s most populous nation currently ranks joint fifth with neighbouring Cameroon with 210,000 metric tonnes production in the 2016-2017 season, data from the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) state. For every 2.6 metric tonnes of raw cocoa beans, a processor Continues on page 38
Inside
L-R: Jamie Angus, director, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service Group; Uche Pedro, panellist; Wole Soyinka, nobel laureate, and Festus Okoye, commissioner, INEC, during the BBC conference themed ‘Beyond Fake News’, in Abuja, yesterday. Pic by Tunde Adeniyi
Economic Intelligence Unit filters out noise in Nigeria’s democracy claims N
IHEANYI NWACHUKWU
S&P to downgrade MTN if it increases Nigeria exposure P. 2
P. 37
ig er ia’s cur rent democratic system may look impressive to the All Progressives Congressled government but that is not the same view held by the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU categorically tagged Nigeria’s democracy as one that
is a ‘Hybrid Regime’, characterised by “substantial irregularities that often prevent the democratic process from being both free and fair”. Another negative linked to Nigeria’s democracy is that government pressure on opposition parties and candidates is common. And in a ‘Hybrid Regime’, “corruption tends to be widespread and the rule of law is
weak. Civil society is weak. Typically, there is harassment of and pressure on journalists, and the judiciary is not independent,” the EIU said. For the first time in three years, the EIU’s latest Democracy Index assessed the global state of democracy in 2018. Surprisingly, it ranked Nigeria low on major indices used. In the “Democracy Index
2018”, titled ‘Me too? Political participation, protest and democracy’, made available to BusinessDay, the EIU used five indices – electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. On electoral process and pluralism, Nigeria scored 6.08, functioning of government (4.64), Continues on page 38