The Ondo State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) views with grave concern the recent policy introduced by the Aiyedatiwa-led administration imposing a ₦250,000 per hectare levy on cocoa farmers operating within forest reserves. This levy, introduced under the pretext of aligning with the European Union Deforestation Free Regulation (EUDR), represents yet another anti-people measure that deepens rural poverty and undermines the very foundation of Ondo’s agrarian economy.
Ondo State produces approximately 40 percent of Nigeria’s cocoa output, making the sector a strategic pillar of our non-oil economy. Across Idanre, Ifedore, Owo, and Akure axis, tens of thousands of smallholder farmers depend on cocoa cultivation for their livelihoods. Yet, under the new directive, each farmer is now compelled to pay ₦150,000 for polygon mapping and an additional ₦100,000 for a five-year agro-forestry permit. To put this in perspective, most smallholders operate between one and three hectares, meaning a typical farmer is being coerced into paying between ₦250,000 and ₦750,000 upfront, an impossible sum in a year when the farm-gate price of cocoa has crashed from ₦14,000 to ₦6,000 per kilogram, and production costs have surged by over 60 percent due to inflation, fuel costs, and taxation.
Worse still, the government insists on a five-year permit for a crop whose economic lifespan exceeds 40 years, thus forcing generational farmers to operate under perpetual uncertainty. The policy is economically irrational, environmentally unsound, and socially destructive. If implemented as designed, it could push thousands of smallholders out of production, accelerating rural unemployment and sparking further encroachment into unregulated forest areas, ironically defeating the very environmental purpose the government claims to uphold.
While small farmers are being subjected to this fiscal torture, large-scale investors and politically connected firms continue to enjoy generous access to land and government incentives. This administration’s dual standard approach, one law for the poor and another for the powerful, exposes the hypocrisy behind its sustainability rhetoric. We note with sadness that, under this same government, a ₦9 billion state-owned chocolate factory remains comatose, a metaphor for policy inconsistency and economic inertia.
True alignment with the EUDR requires traceability, not taxation. The European Union did not mandate the extortion of small farmers; rather, it calls for transparent land-use mapping, community participation, and state-backed sustainability support. Across Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, similar compliance programmes are government-subsidised, not farmer-funded. Ondo State cannot afford to invent its own punitive version of global best practice.
We therefore demand that Governor Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa immediately suspend the ₦250,000 levy pending comprehensive stakeholder review, convene an inclusive dialogue involving farmer cooperatives, traditional rulers, and environmental experts to realign the policy, publish a transparent breakdown of all proposed payments, mapping contracts, and beneficiaries to ensure public accountability, and adopt a shared-cost sustainability model where the government supports mapping and reforestation rather than shifting the entire burden to peasant farmers.
If this administration fails to act swiftly, Ondo risks losing its status as Nigeria’s cocoa heartland. The farmers who feed this economy must not be punished for trying to survive in a system rigged against them. Sustainability must not become a new word for suffering.
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