Former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Victor Attah, has said that Nigeria declined from being one of the major foreign exchange earners in the world when its citizens started showing an appetite for ‘ponmo’(cowhide) consumption.
Attah said this on Saturday at the 2024 investiture ceremony of the Institute of Certified Sales Professionals which held in Lagos.
According to Business Research Insights, the global cowhide product market size is anticipated to be worth $174bn in 2022. The market is projected to touch $349bn in 2031 with a CAGR of 8.0 per cent during the forecast period.
Lamenting the drop in Foreign Direct Investments into Nigeria despite foreign trips by government officials and more, the former governor chronicled some of the ways Nigeria could have earn foreign exchange but failed to.
He said, “The international natural leather trade is probably the one that reveals how pathetic our nation has made itself with regard to the question “what can we sell?” The world’s leading producers are China, Italy, India, Brazil, Korea and Russia. While the top four African producers are Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa and Morocco.
“Yet, up to the 1970s, Nigeria was the largest producer and exporter of hides and skins. Our decline from one of the major foreign exchange earners in the world to where we are today started from when we began to consume animal skins – which we hitherto exported. As it is often said, “you can’t eat your cake and have it”, Nigerians are discovering that we can’t eat ponmo and earn foreign exchange from natural leather.
The global market for natural leather keeps expanding; just as our appetite for ‘ponmo’ apparently has no limit.”
Speaking further, Attah, who was governor between 1999 and 2007 said that he pitched the idea of taking advantage of China’s huge population by convincing them to drink cocoa instead of their usual traditional drink.
“I remember that as a governor, I had an opportunity to discuss this question of what we can sell with the president. The focus was cocoa. We talked about China and its very large population and how beneficial it would be to Nigeria if we could get the Chinese to adopt a cup of cocoa rather than their traditional drink of baijiu as a night cap. It turned out to be mere wishful thinking because we did not pursue the idea any further nor did we formulate any strategy to promote it.
Rather we stopped funding the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria our production went down and so did the quality,” he stated.
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