According to Nana, she used what she has to get what she needs after her boyfriend who was sponsoring her education abandoned her midway following lies told against her by jealous friends. Her words: "My boyfriend whom I met when I went to visit an uncle who was sponsoring my education. We had agreed to get married as soon as possible. Then some people i regard has a friends started peddling wicked lies against me without confirming if they were saying was true or false, he called it quits just like that. They told him I had an incurable disease. So, i decided to help myself because my parents cannot do anything for me. We are poor. My father used to be a driver but now he is unemployed while my mother is a full time housewife. Sometimes, she sells vegetables", They were paying me GH¢150 a month and you work late hours. But if you go out to hustle in the night, you can get that kind of money within a day or two. About 600 men slept with me from last year
Reports said the 1,200-ton-a-day tomato- processing factory closed down because it was unable to get its required feed stock from farmers, who switched to other crops at the beginning of the rainy season in may.
The plant was idle for more than two years until March this year over a supply disruption partly caused by a price dispute by farmers. Even after the disagreement was resolved, the factory was unable to ramp up production beyond 20% of its capacity due to inadequate supply of tomatoes, as most of the farmers lack the needed credit to expand production.
The company is losing at least 30 million naira every month with employees idle, according to the managing director of Dangote farms, Abdulkareem Kaita.
The plant is counting on the government's restriction of food imports to sustain operations. When Aliko Dangate decided to set up the plant, it was with the clear goal of supplanting imports of tomato paste mostly from China.
This expectation as suffered setbacks.
Nigerian Customes an average of 2.3 million tons of tomatoes a year and produce just about the same amount, according to 2017 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Without out adequate storage facilities and an efficient means of transporting them to the markets, about 45% of harvested tomatoes go to waste.
Nigeria imports about 1.3 million tons of the red vegetable to fill the gap, mostly from China and other parts of Asia. Nigeria is the third largest importer of the commodity in Africa.
"we knew tomato is a seasonal crop before we started as it's the case in China and Europe," Kaita said. "What we set out to do was reduce the post harvest loss yearly to feed the factory."
Unfazed by the problems, Dangote farm is pushing ahead with its original objective of replacing tomato paste-import.
With President Muhammadu Buhari making the reduction of food imports a key objective of his administration,the Nigerian Central Bank is implementing a new credit plan intended to help the farmers grow tomatoes all year round.
Dangote farms has also acquired a 5,000-hectare farm to grow a high-yield variety of tomatoes to meet its factory's requirements, while introducing the same strain to other farms to increase their productivity.
"With this, the output of the farmers would tremendously improve and the processing factory would record ample supply," Kaita said.
Kaita also wants the government to enforce its decision to curtail tomato-paste imports to reduce incidents of dumping of subsidized past on the Nigerian market.
"The effective implementation of the government's policy in restricting of tomato paste importation will guarantee more investment in the tomato value chain, which will eventually lead to self-sufficiency in few years to come," Kaita said.
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