Dangote Tomato Processing Company Suspends Production

Nigeria, our beloved country has been experiencing what we call "hard times", from the dwindling economy, which has led to the rise in the price of commodities to tribal crisis cases. One of the said scarce commodities whose price has been hiked is Tomato. Tomato is an important fruit which is used in basically every household in Nigeria for different delicacies. They can either be purchased fresh or processed, but most Nigerians prefer having it fresh, as they believe this enables them get the full nutrients available in the fruit. 

Recently, a lot of Nigerians, especially Lagosians, have lamented on the scarcity of this precious fruit in the market, as they are either too little or too expensive.

This scarcity became noticeable with the scarcity of fuel in the country, as most of the sellers complained that trucks were not able to bring the fruit down to Lagos. This has made most Lagosians resort to the use of processed tomatoes and fresh pepper, but it would seem the scarcity of tomatoes is also affecting tomato processing factories in the country.

According to the Managing director of Dangote Tomato Processing Factory in Kadawa, Kano State, Alhaji Abdulkadir Kaita, the newly established factory has suspended production. He told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kano yesterday, that the company, which commenced production in February, had stopped production due to the lack of raw materials. He said that the company found it necessary to suspend production because there was no fresh tomatoes to process. He added that most of the tomato farms in Kano, Jigawa, Plateau, Katsina and Kaduna states were affected by a pest popularly known as “Tuta Absoluta” which killed all the tomato species there. The managing director noted that the pest had destroyed tomato farms in the affected states, making the price of the perishable commodity to go up. 

However, he said production would commence during the next irrigation season, emphasising that the company had the capacity to process 120 tonnes of fresh tomatoes per day at full capacity.

So as the saying goes, better days are coming and Nigerians are waiting eagerly for these days and the promised change.