We should be ashamed of the fact that Nigeria has not given the world a tropical breakfast cereal 

By Ayo Akinfe 

(1) Today is August 8. On this day in 1898, a gentleman known as Will Kellogg invented a cereal known as Corn Flakes, which has gone on to become the world’s most popular breakfast cereal 

(2) Today, Kellogg employs about 33,000 people and has an annual turnover of about $13bn. What does it do? Kellogg converts cereals into breakfast packages. Kellogg now has other products like Pringles, Cheez-It Crackers, Pop Tarts, etc 

(3) To make a company like Kellogg succeed, you basically need a steady supply of cheap cereals or root crops that can churn out breakfast packages at low cost. Companies like Weetabix and Quaker Oats operate along the same principles as Kellogg 

(4) Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of cassava with an annual output of about 50m tonnes, accounting for around 20% of global production 

(5) Nigeria is also the world’s largest yam producer with an annual crop of 40m tonnes, accounting for about 70% of global production 

(6) We are also the world’s second largest millet producer with an annual crop of 5m tonnes

(7) Grain sorghum is the third most important cereal crop grown in the US and the fifth most important cereal crop grown in the world. In 2010, Nigeria was the world's largest producer of grain sorghum. Today, we are the second largest producer with an annual crop of about 7m tonnes 

(8) Nigeria is also the world’s largest producer of cocoyams with an output of 3.2mn tonnes

(9) There is nothing whatsoever stopping us from making breakfast cereals from cassava, yam, cocoyam, millet or sorghum. I challenge anyone to tell me why we cannot. Corn flakes are made from maize, Weetabix is made from wheat and Quaker Oats is made from oats. Why is there no tropical alternative to these breakfast cereals? It falls to Nigeria, the pride of the negro, the giant of Africa to fill the void. We cannot run away from our responsibilities and try and pass the duty to some other African country

(10) Were Nigeria a nation of doers, by now, we would have a globally acclaimed cereal brand made out of one of our crops that can compete internationally with Kellogg Corn Flakes, Quaker Oats and Weetabix. What we desperately need is a world class domestic food company to step into the void. Personally, I only see three options - (1) Dangote Industries, (2) We privatise and diversify the NNPC or (3) Nigeria’s pastorprueners merge their operations into a company called Man of God Plc