The Starlink Global and Ideal Limited has promised to invest N7b in cocoa and cashew production in five years, and also open its processing factory in 2025.
The Managing Director of the company, Adeyemi Murtadha Adeniyi, who revealed this during the 25th anniversary of the company held in Ikeja, Lagos, said Nigeria will not get anywhere if the citizens continue to wait for the government.
“If Starlink has waited for the government, we will not be able to bail out millions of Nigerians who are doing well in cocoa now. The company faced a lot of challenges and became bankrupt, at a time when a firm did everything to stop their operation but we have since moved on, changed the business of cocoa in Nigeria and improved the agriculture landscape.
“We have partnered with Odu’a Investment; Oodua owns about 25,000 hectares of land across West Africa, so we are partnering with them to go for backward integration. We have identified two places, each as the pilot for 5000 hectares and we will scale up with time. If the government sees what we are doing, then they can support, but we will not wait for the government.”
Speaking on processing the product in the country, Adeniyi, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company, said the firm has acquired the biggest processing factory in Nigeria, and from April 2025, it will start processing cocoa in Mowe, Ogun State.
Owing “to our efforts to make sure that people in the cocoa business do not remain poor, a company in Nigeria invested $30m in Vietnam to kill Starlink. That action made them walk away from our contract, and we lost N1.7b. We were bankrupt in 2018. We later got a $5m loan, and that saved us and the entire industry.
Also speaking, the Chairman of Odu’a Group of Companies, Otunba Bimbo Ashiru: “We must be less dependent on oil. The ease of doing business and bringing in investors into Nigeria is very key. Nigeria was the second largest exporter of Cocoa in the world in the 1970s, but it went wrong when we found oil. Now, we should go back to that basis. Nigeria must be agricultural and not an oil-dependent economy.
“Odu’a Group just established a Southwest Agric Company limited that would start doing what Chief Obafemi Awolowo and others were doing.
The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, said the Federal Government is encouraging diversification of the economy through growth and development of the non-oil commodities sector.
She said the commodity market is a key driver in most developing economies, especially, in Africa where it accounts for the bulk of exports, adding that it is also a source of employment generation, and means of livelihood, as well as contributing significantly to the government revenue basket.
Represented by Toyin Akeredolu Johnson, Oduwole the ministry as a policymaker is committed to the advancement of the non-oil sector and it will continue to create the enabling environment for the development and growth of the sector.
