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Centre seeks for Nigeria/Ethiopia partnership on tea, coffee production
The Centre for Coffee and Tea Initiative (CCTI) in Africa has called on Nigerian government to strengthen bilateral relationship with the Ethiopian government on tea and coffee production for additional foreign exchange.
The Founder of the centre, Mr. Innocent Mbonu was speaking at the International Coffee, Tea Day in Abuja on Wednesday.
Mbonu said that Nigeria produced tea and coffee and send to Cameroon which they claim ownership of.
“We have gone to the National Assembly with a bill and very soon we are going to have the National Coffee and Tea Council that will take care of activities pertaining to tea and coffee in Nigeria.
“About 23 states can produce coffee in Nigeria without stress, the highland tea, the lowland tea as well as coffee, so we want to see how we can sensitise all activities so that Nigeria will come back in producing coffee and tea in Nigeria.
“Tea and coffee is next to oil like Ethopia is using it as their foreign exchange earner. In Nigeria, we will know how to do things, so we’ll look at the activities of how we can do and get it done well.
“The land is there, they are fertile both in the north, south, east and west, everywhere is fertile for the growth of coffee and tea. So why don’t we do it by ourselves.
“Most of the coffee and tea produced in Mambila plateau in Taraba state is being sent to Cameroon and the Cameroonians are using the French people to produce it as made in French communities, so we can exploit the atmosphere and begin to get it right,” he said.
Also, the Ethiopian Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Yonas Sanbe, said that both countries could leverage on their population to strengthen bilateral relationships for the production of tea and coffee.
Sanbe said that the economy of both countries was dominant with cultures particularly the coffee production, hence Nigeria must harness this area to generate additional money for its economy.
“I think Nigeria and Ethiopia also are founding members of Africa Union (AU), so our relations grow stronger particularly in multiple distribution in Nigeria.
“This connects Nigerians to the rest of world and the Africans. So we signed the agreement regarding the bilateral issues and business issues.
“So we are working to strengthen the center. In Ethiopia, about 50 per cent of the coffee produced in the country is consumed locally for its high market- domestic markets
“We are trying to diversify our economy from agriculture to promote the foreign direct exchange which Nigeria can also take a cue from,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Director General, Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), Doko Ibrahim, said that the council’s efforts in raw materials utilisation had led to the popularization of various products.
Ibrahim said this led to the production of Moringa tea, medically proven to be essential for some classes of dietetic patients.
” Under the RMRDC boosting programme, the council has supplied tea seedlings to tea farmers in the Mambila plateau and further supported with tea processing equipment
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ELECTING A POPE: THE BURDEN OF MAKING CHOICES
By Olubunmi Mayaki
“Habemus papam!” which in the English Language means, “We have a Pope.” was pronounced by Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, a French Catholic prelate, His Eminence, Cardinal Dominique Mamberti from the iconic loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican City on Thursday 8 May 2025 after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Those Latin words proclaimed to a tensed global audience the result of the election of a new Supreme Pontiff after the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) on 21 April 2025 at the age of 88 years.
The Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Robert Prevost (Pope Leo XIV) emerged as primus inter pares (first among equals) from the cardinals after undergoing detailed election rituals, which have been the process of selecting the head of the 2000-year-old Catholic Church for centuries.
A papal conclave, the process by which a new Pope is selected, was held consisting of one hundred and thirty-three (133) College of Cardinals, drawn from different parts of the world converged at St. Peter’s Basilica for a public mass before heading to the Sistine Chapel to cast their votes to elect the 267th Pope. During the mass, part of the choir renditions reminded voters to remember their last day when they would stand before God in judgment to render their stewardship on earth, which is to prevent them from rigging the voting process. At the behest of the senior cardinal deacon, voting formalities were read to the electors, which included- oath-taking- “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom I believe should be elected according to God”. Other processes are banning phones, jamming calls, forbidding speaking or contacting any of the candidates, voting rounds, spiritual pauses etc.
Looking at the voting process, one should be curious about how an election to pick a leader for a religious body could be so systematic and attract such global attention. It is a sharp contrast to elections where political leaders are chosen. Even in the so-called advanced democracies, we have seen electoral flaws and a dearth of political leaders. States are finding it difficult to pick genuine statesmen, giving rise to hegemonic leaders. These political imperia ums are emerging and stoking crises in their domain. Fallouts of elections are no longer favourable due to unpopular candidates forced on citizens.
Africa, as a case study, shows that no matter the rules put in place by the continent’s leaders, our election processes have been fraught with rigging, corruption and waste. In most cases, the leaders who set the rules are the violators of the same process. Governments conspire with electoral bodies to truncate election processes at will. Such political brigandage has destroyed the progress of the continent.
Closing this view, I hope that African leaders will take a cue from the Catholic Church’s election process to reinvigorate and rejig the continent’s faltering political process for the good of its people. Better still; political scholars from the continent can study the Catholic model. The common features of elections in most parts of Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, are riddled with vote rigging, violence, human rights abuse, repression, barbarism, crises, untold hardship, and sometimes, outright war. This is the bane of Africa’s development.
The burden of making good political choices should ordinarily rest on citizens. However, politicians have hijacked this process for selfish reasons. It has given birth to bad leaders. If we fail to get it right, what we see is what we get. That is the story of the world politics!
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