Akwa Ibom sees coconut as alternative to oil, says Udom Emmanuel

Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State has said coconut will soon become an alternative to crude oil in terms of revenue to the state.

The state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Ini Ememobong, stated this shortly after a tour of projects across the state with journalists.

He also said the governor is consolidating economic growth with job creation, even as he creates factories and industries that interface mechanisation with human input.

Ememobong said: “I will admit that industrialisation amid mechanisation, have reduced human involvement in industries; but what the governor has done to ensure jobs for citizens is to ensure human interface in machines in factories.

There are things that machines would have done faster and better but our factories and firms are designed to also engage our people because human beings need to survive.

Citing the state’s coconut oil factory, he said the factory with initial installed capacity of 300,000 coconuts per session, runs three sessions and has provided jobs for many at different levels of production.

According to him, even before the factory machines roll, jobs have already been created for suppliers of raw materials, which is coconut, needed at the factory.

He said though the location of the factory is a natural coconut belt, subsistent production could not meet the raw material needs of the factory.

To solve the problem, he said the government, apart from planting two million seedlings in a plantation close to the factory, it also set aside a day tagged Coconut Day, when 300,000 seedlings were purchased and distributed to farmers to produce coconut needed at the factory.

“Also all our school farms have been engaged with coconut planting. The idea is to have local source of raw materials and provide jobs for farmers and others involved in the chain of production.

“The job opportunity is wide. The commissioner of agriculture told me that farmers have formed themselves into clusters. The easiest part of this is the off-taking. Even if you have that virgin coconut oil now, there is a market for it. There is a market for people, who are doing confectioneries, people using it for different things,” Ememobong said.

On the future value of coconut, he said: “The ultimate idea for the coconut industry is to hit the international export market. His Excellency sees it as the alternative crude, when fossil fuel eventually takes the back seat.

“When you calculate the cost of coconut oil per barrel, it far beats crude per barrel. With the coconut factory, the governor is beginning to prepare that if in 30 years as being speculated, the fossil fuel is done away with, the coconut business would have been stabilised. That is the focus and it is long-term thing.”