For years, cassava farmers in Benue faced a frustrating reality: They could produce plenty of cassava and still struggle to find a worthwhile market for it. At a point, dried cassava, locally called kpor, had become almost worthless. Some farmers used it as firewood, manure for tree crops or powdered it for marking football fields. Then Pure Bio-Tech Company Ltd. arrived. And the economics began to change.
The inscription on the company’s signboard says it plainly: “Making serious cassava farmers millionaires.” It may sound like a marketing slogan, but the story around the factory suggests that cassava has indeed acquired a new commercial value in communities supplying the company. Pure Bio-Tech processes both fresh and dried cassava into ethanol and, in the process, has created a dependable industrial market for a crop that many farmers had abandoned.
One of the company’s important contributions is the introduction of standard weighing scales in the purchase of cassava. That may appear a small intervention, but standard measurement brings predictability into an agricultural market. Farmers know what they are selling, processors know what they are buying, and the room for arbitrary estimation is reduced. More importantly, a serious buyer creates an incentive for farmers to plant more. Where there was once little economic reason to expand cassava production, there is now a factory looking for raw materials.
The opportunity goes beyond individual farmers. Pure Bio-Tech says it buys cassava from eight states: Benue, Nasarawa, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Taraba, Bauchi and Cross River. Its demand therefore connects farmers to an industrial value chain extending beyond the immediate host community. According to the company Manager, Mr. Abdulkadir Mohammed, Benue currently accounts for about 40 per cent of its allocated supply arrangements and can end up contributing as much as 65 per cent of actual supply. If properly managed, such a market can stimulate cassava cultivation, aggregation, transportation and associated businesses across the state.
There is also the employment dividend. Mr. Abdulkadir says a substantial proportion of Pure Bio- Tech’s workforce is drawn from Benue, including people occupying positions such as safety management, human resources, accounting, legal services and cassava supervision. The company also says it has provided direct infrastructure support to its host community, including seven boreholes, electricity infrastructure and a transformer reportedly purchased at N11.5 million, alongside armoured cable said to have cost N1.5 million. It is also constructing a school and providing annual festive support to the community.
Perhaps the most interesting dividend, however, is security. The area where the factory is located was once affected by violent conflict, with lives and property lost. The presence of the company has brought permanent economic activity and security personnel to an area that was previously vulnerable. The company says soldiers are stationed around its frontage while naval personnel cover the river end. Whatever the wider security implications, an industrial facility that keeps people economically engaged and brings security presence into a previously troubled environment represents an important dimension of the peace-and-development equation.
But development must not become a licence for impunity. Pure Bio-Tech’s own account shows that its relationship with regulators has not always been smooth. The company says its test-running phase began in 2022, that it experienced an environmental incident involving water overflow, and that the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) subsequently intervened and the facility was shut in 2023. The company says it has since complied with regulatory requirements, possesses an Environmental Impact Assessment certificate, engages environmental consultants to test its water monthly and submits reports to NESREA.
That part of the story deserves continued public scrutiny. A company can be economically valuable and still be required to meet environmental standards. The solution is not to choose between industry and the environment. It is to ensure that Pure Bio-Tech operates profitably and responsibly, with transparent monitoring that gives the host community confidence that its activities are not causing unacceptable environmental harm.
The same balanced approach should apply to complaints from farmers over access to the company’s purchasing system. Pure Bio-Tech says it stopped accepting some small-truck deliveries after repeated problems with improperly dried cassava, congestion at its gates and protests, while also arguing that it must purchase only quantities it can process and store. Farmers, on the other hand, need predictable access to the market. A practical solution is therefore not confrontation but organisation: Farmer cooperatives, scheduled delivery windows, clear quality standards, transparent allocation of supply slots and a published complaints mechanism.
The company also rejects allegations that suppliers pay bribes to secure purchasing slots. Such allegations should not be dismissed merely because management denies them; neither should they be treated as established facts without evidence. The better solution is transparency. If supply allocation criteria, quantities, prices, quality requirements and delivery schedules are publicly communicated, allegations of preferential treatment become easier to test.
For the host community, the message should be equally clear: Pure Bio-Tech is a business, not a charity. It has employees to pay, equipment to maintain, raw materials to purchase, taxes and regulatory obligations to meet, and a profit motive to sustain. Community benefits are more likely to endure when the company itself remains viable. Blocking its gates, disrupting production or treating every corporate obligation as an open-ended entitlement could ultimately hurt the very farmers and workers who depend on the factory.
There is also a responsibility on government. If Benue wants to become an industrial and agricultural processing hub, its tax and regulatory environment must encourage companies to establish, survive and expand. That does not mean lowering legitimate environmental, labour or safety standards. It means making regulation predictable, transparent and business-friendly while ensuring compliance.
Pure Bio-Tech therefore offers Benue an interesting solution model: Connect farming to industry, industry to jobs, jobs to household income, and industrial presence to community development and security. The objective should not be to shield the company from legitimate criticism, nor to allow legitimate grievances against it to destroy an important market for farmers.
The bigger question is how Benue can get more out of the opportunity.
If one cassava-processing company can revive interest in a crop that farmers had virtually written off, purchase directly from farmers across several states, create employment, contribute taxes, support community infrastructure and bring economic activity into a previously troubled location, then the state’s task should be to make such industrial stories multiply.
The solution is partnership, transparency and accountability; not hostility.
