Rubber sector crucial to Nigeria’s food security and growth – Expert

Against the backdrop of incessant food shortages and scarcity in the County, the federal government has been called upon to give top priority attention to the natural rubber sub-sector if the much-talked-about food sufficiency must be realised.

Dr Lelia Nkechinyere Dongo, executive director of Rubber Research Institute of Nigeria,  (RRIN,) who spoke to our Correspondent said the country will still continue to import all necessary irrigation facilities outside the country whereas there are rubber plantations that can be processed to produce such facilities.

She expressed displeasure on the neglect of rubber, even as she called on policymakers in the agricultural sector to discount the long gestation period of the rubber tree and dwell largely on vast benefits.

“We’ve presented a position paper concerning our challenges to the National Council on Agric and Food Security, which met in Calabar last week. The paper has been adopted.

“Nigeria should tap into the endless benefits from rubber. Policy members should focus attention on rubber as well as do other countries who are reaping from rubber.

“Ivory Coast produces 1.8m tons of rubber and ranks three in the world whereas Nigeria which was number one in Africa now ranks a distant 13th, producing a mere 167 tons which brought in over $200m last year. In 2018, we raked in $50m.  This is even as the country has not paid desired attention to rubber and its allied products in the value chain.

“We need  financial intervention for rubber based forestry inter-crop and development of early maturing of young nursery as well as establishment of 30,000 hectares of rubber plantations.”

Regarding the seven-year rubber gestation period, Dongo said RRIN is researching how to reduce it to three years, as was done with cocoa which was yielding after five years but now a couple of years.

She said they have international collaborations, adding that there are some good Nigerian scientists with molecular tools and other techniques which RRIN will engage the best for the task.

Stressing on importance and benefits of rubber, Dongo explained that there is virtually no sector of life that has no need for it, revealing that it has 50 products in over 400,000 applications.

She said they have programmes to encourage many more local farmers to be engaged in the value chain, even as she advised not to be deterred by the gestation period.