As Nigerian households continue to rue the scarcity of the important food ingredient, Tomatoes, the battle that recently broke out between local producers of tomato paste and the importers of the product, over who controls the tomato paste market in the country has moved from the green Chambers of the National Assembly to the fields where the gladiators are digging in.
The Chairman of Erisco Foods Nigeria, Chief Eric Umeofia, who tweeked the national consciousness on the health hazards of the tomato pastes in the Nigerian markets, said on Thursday that the vast expanse of land he has acquired across many states in the northern part of the country underscores his undying determination to end the importation of the product and consequently create jobs for the Nigerian farmers whom he said he is engaging as tomato out-growers.
According to him, Erisco Foods is acquiring hectares of land in different parts of the country for tomato farming, saying the argument by importers that Nigerian tomatoes are not good enough for processing into tomato pastes cannot stand any practical test as he has already configured his machines and employed experts to start processing tomatoes from Nigerian farms. He stated that he is venturing into the sector to end the wastages in the subsector which is estimated to be about 60 per cent of the country’s annual production capacity.
Chief Umeofia blamed the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for colluding with the importers, who, he claimed, are allegedly flooding the Nigerian market with poisonous tomato pastes made in China and India.
He further alleged that the imports also circumvent the checks the products were supposed to pass through abroad before export to Nigeria. “NAFDAC knows about this and that is going on because of corruption.
The NAFDAC which Dora Akunyili left behind is not the NAFDAC we have today,” he alleged. “What the importers are selling to Nigerians is just starch and colouring. Six years ago when I joined the business, I started by importing concentrate and was packaging it, but I have stopped the importation of the concentrate and I now use locally produced tomatoes.
“I told the other importers to start making effort to start manufacturing but they said it is not possible” Sunday Telegraph notes that at the recent one-day Public Hearing organised by the joint House of Representative Committees on Health Services, Drug and Narcotics, Chief Umeofia had alleged that the importation of the tomatoe paste is taking jobs away from Nigerians to Chinese and Indians.
He suggested a ban on the importation of the product and the policy of backward integration for the product, so that the country would soon become not only self sufficient in the product, but also a net exporter of the product.
But the Legal Adviser of a group of 24 importers of tomato paste, under aegis of Association of Stakeholders in Edible and Consumer Products in Nigeria (ASECPIN), Mr Ikenna Amechi dismissed the claim by Chief Umeofia, saying it is driven by selfish interest as against the national interest he is pretending to be what he is driving him. According to him, the Erisco Foods boss intends to get government to chase other importers out of the market for him and Dangote tomato industry to have a monopoly of the market.
He disclosed that the members of the association have submitted their products to the joint House of Reps investigating committee to conduct a laboratory test on them anywhere in the world, to find out if there is anything poisonous in the tomato-paste.
Amechi alleged that Chief Umeofia, who alleged that the tomato pastes imported from China and India is cancer causing, does not have tomato a farm in the country as he claims, even as he has continued to import tomato concentrate from the same China which he package into cans at his facility in Oregun, Lagos. “The difference is that he imports in drums and we imports in cans.”
Amechi also said that Nigeria does not have the capacity to produce over 70 per cent of its tomato paste needs and therefore needs to continue to import until the country can produce enough to be self sufficient.
He added that Nigeria does not even have the species of tomatoes need for the production of the tomato paste because Nigerian tomato specie is 80 per cent water.
“We are not against local production of the product, infact some of us have acquired large expanse of land to build factories, so we are canvassing a 10-year programme for the country to develop the local industry, because the tomato specie for making the tomato paste will be adopted, then the country will move from seasonal farming of the tomatoes to irrigated farming for all-year-round availability for the factories,” he said. He pointed out that the Dangote factory opened recently in Kano has been closed down because there are no tomatoes to process.
