OPGAN seeks investors to close Nigeria’s $500m palm oil deficit

DESPITE BEING A MAJOR COMPO NENT for the production of over 40 essential items, excluding cooking, palm oil production has remained heavily underexploited in Nigeria with outdated processing methods majorly practised in the country, resulting in high production deficits and supply gaps, with the country requiring about $500 million worth of palm oil to meet its annual local demand.

Joe Onyiuke, the national president of Oil Palm Growers Association of Nigeria (OPGAN), made the assertion at a recent town hall meeting with the Akwa Ibom State chapter of OPGAN held in Uyo, the state capital.

Onyiuke lamented that Nigeria’s oil palm production level is so bad that the fifth largest producer in the world with an estimated production capacity of about 1.4 million tonnes in the 2021/22 season, does not have any capacity to export palm oil again.

He also observed that the war in Russia-Ukraine conflict has further constrained major palm oil producing countries of Malaysia and Indonesia to limit their export capacities with Nigeria unable to attend to increasing export requests since production levels have stagnated overtime.

Speaking on the relevance of oil palm production, the OPGAN president explained that oil production affects the lives of the Nigerian populace everywhere, especially in the food industry.

“Without palm oil, you can’t have your noodles, pasta, soap, margarine, mayonnaise, chocolate, toothpaste and many others in the food industry. Oil palm is the key because more than 40 items are produced from it, and so when you talk about food security in the world, oil palm remains key,” he stated.

According to Onyiuke, poor funding and proliferation of unorganised smallholder farms and low participation of youths, remain major constraints to increasing production levels.

For the gap to be bridged, he said OPGAN has taken it upon itself to organise members properly towards galvanising its strength for increased quality production, leveraging on a ready and willing market and a surge in price of the commodity as enough incentive for them to increase efforts on production.

He added that local palm oil producers would need to re-strategise their efforts at both production and organisation to be able to attract the necessary funding needed for improved and increased production.