Nigeria is a major cocoa exporter, but it is along Ghana and Ivory Coast, but the EU is the largest market.
John Etta abandoned his search for a white-collar job six years after graduating from college at Cross River Home State. Following on to his uncle’s advice, he took on agribusiness in 2021, focusing on cocoa, a key ingredient in chocolate, and putting bush mango, plantain, yum and cocoyam aside.
His uncle, a university teacher, introduced him to the abundant opportunities for cocoa farming, particularly in the Bendege Affi community, 240km from the state’s capital, Calabar.
About 50 minutes from the fast motorcycle AFI forest reserve, the community is home to the leading license purchasing agent (LBA), 23 km from Icom, the state’s cocoa trading hub, and serves as an intermediary between farmers and exporters.
With the rising prices of cocoa and lack of formal employment, almost all families in Ikom and surrounding communities such as Etta and Abanguku now own cocoa farms, even in small plots of their homes. Land demand has skyrocketed, urging locals to expand their farms to meet the growing global demand for crops and invade AFI Reserve, a protected forest important in the fight against climate change.
Villagers claim that these forests, which were handed over to the government decades ago, remain unused.
“Everyone is in the forest reserve now,” said Bassy Foster, a forest ranger. He said he could not stop farmers from illegally using forest land. “The forests are not expanding, but the population is growing. People need the forests to survive.”
Benjamin Takim, the Bendege Afi tracker union chief and motorcycle rider who transports cocoa, said, “People at Abanguku farm in the AFI Reserve. No one has given them access. The government has broken in because they abandoned the land.
“I’m not joking with Mori here. I’m not joking with Mori when Cocoa’s business is concerned,” Takim said.
In January, off-season prices for cocoa ranged from N12,500 to N13,500 per kilogram, with 100kg bags selling N1,250,000 to N1,350,000. Prices are expected to rise further when the cocoa season begins in October. Takaim Ekoli, a cocoa farmer who has become a retired civil servant, confirmed this trend.
The cocoa trade involves a structured supply chain. The farmers harvest the beans, dry the beans, and sell them to the LBA through intermediaries. The warehouse-owned LBA supports farmers with logistics, training, high-yield varieties, and pesticides such as gammaline to control Black Pod’s disease.
LBA sells in turn to exporters, including international suppliers such as Oram, Tulip and Cargill, and then supplies them to the global chocolate industry.
The chocolate industry has long promoted deforestation as the industry deforesting for cocoa farms and its suppliers were unable to monitor farmers like farmers around Icom. This concern motivated the European Union to establish the European Union’s deforestation regulations (EUDR), which requires exporters to prove that cocoa and other major products entering Europe are not being fed from deforested land or reserves. Originally set in January 2025, the regulations were postponed year after year due to concerns from international stakeholders.
Among Icom’s major cocoa exporters is Tulip Cocoa Processing Limited, a subsidiary of Theobroma, based in Amsterdam, which has been trading cocoa butter since 1922. According to the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC), tulips have expanded their capacity annually from 12,000 tonnes to over 30,000 tonnes.
Tulip, whose main export destination is EU, did not respond to email inquiries. Also, calls to the number on the official website were not passed.
However, a senior company official said the tulips maintain its cocoa’s strict traceability system.
“We have field officers, agriculture scholars and traceability systems. We don’t buy cocoa from protected areas,” officials are asking for names to be not given, as they don’t have permission to speak to journalists. “We will register farmers, track supply and provide training to discourage deforestation.”
However, community members dispute this claim. The farmers are said to have mixed cocoa from both family-owned and reserve forests before selling them to LBAS.
This was confirmed by a “tracker” transporting products from the farm.
“We can’t count the number of bags we carry from this place, because sometimes some people pull two tons a year. That means 32 bags. Tons are 16 bags. So there’s no way to keep a record of all the bags being taken out of the forest during the season,” Benjamin said.
“My usual load is two bags of two 200kg bags, which are 400kg at a time, and can do it like 10 times a day during the season.
This was confirmed by Ranger Foster. “Everyone is in the forest reserve. Tulips and Oram, they all give farmers money to buy and supply cocoa to farmers. They buy all these cocoa and supply them. Forest?”
Godwin Ukwu, owner of Goddy Ukwu Warehouse, is a prominent LBA at Icom and the national general secretary of the Nigerian Cocoa Association (CAN), who explained that there is actually a healthy tracking system.
Nevertheless, Ukwu, the leading tulip supplier, confirmed that about 20% of cocoa from untraceable sources have found a way to exporters.
“Here in Cross River state, we have been informed of this (EU regulations) for a very long time. And I think we work not only in Cross River but across Nigeria. We are tirelessly trying to make sure the reserve areas are not eroded.
“The cocoa we do now, the cocoa we sell, about 80% of the cocoa we sell, even if we go to my warehouse now before loading our luggage, and ask the traceable manager downstairs and ask all the cocoa documents in the store, and it’s traceable cocoa in the sense that the cocoa said where the cocoa was supplied,” Ukuu said.
Ukwu has advocated a law that would abolish some reserve areas because “it is part of a region that is not acceptable under EU law,” and cannot track cocoa from the region.
“What we’re going to do now is to go back to the Cross Rivers State Legislature where areas were already planted before this law was put in place, and we need to remove them.
“The company we work with now is tulip cocoa processing, and you know they are good at keeping records. So the truth is, what we’re doing now is that both cocoa leaving our warehouse will go to Ijeb Mushin’s Talip. Use GPS coordinates to plot the farm.
Ukwu argued that while some farms were in the reserve area before EU regulations, his association was in motion to remove those farms in Cross River State.
“What is the EU saying, should we cut down the stems and planting trees? So what we’re trying to do is go back to the state capitol to ask that some areas, some reserves, should be abolished.”
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He argued that cocoa trees contribute to carbon absorption. “I don’t know why planting cocoa is a problem if it serves the same purpose as forest trees. Of course, forests increase the ecosystem benefits, but cocoa trees also add value.”
When asked about 20% untraceable cocoa, UKWU suggested redirecting it to a non-EU market. “EU regulations are not global. Asia and other markets still buy cocoa. If Europe doesn’t receive it, other buyers will be found before this becomes a global issue.”
On behalf of George Obeneki, it has confirmed that AFI Forest in the Icom Local Government Area, chair of the Cross River National Forestry Committee, Ibien Ecien, the committee’s operational officer, is the government’s reserves.
While acknowledging that some villagers actually invaded the forest to farm cocoa, he made it clear that measures have been introduced to sanction such farmers through mobile courts established by the state government.
The director said agitation by some communities to remove certain parts of the forest will be considered by the committee.
“As the population is growing, there should be a need for land on the farm, but we need to follow legitimate procedures to ensure that the right thing is done.
“We are custodians. We are aware of the population explosion, which means that the quest for land is on board. Whenever they come up with demand for a particular region, we know what to do,” he said.
Nigeria is a major cocoa exporter, but it is along Ghana and Ivory Coast, but the EU is the largest market.
Therefore, as West African nations seek solutions to cocoa sourced from forests, concerns have risen about the impact on cocoa, top non-oil exports, Nigeria, when the EUDR is in place.
(This report was completed with support from the Journalism Innovation Development Centre as part of the Center for Research Journalism’s Open Climate Reporting Initiatives).
