(This is the second and final part of this report. You can read the first part here.)
On a windy Tuesday afternoon on 18 February, Akaninyene Nelson had just returned from tapping palm wine in a swamp several kilometres from Ikot Ebom Itam, a community in Itu Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.
Sitting shirtless on a wooden bench, the tapper danced with his head and hands to music from a rechargeable radio set on a rickety bamboo table and gulped palm wine from a calabash.
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Known as “Inyang” in the community, the 52-year-old father of six took up palm wine tapping after his late father, who gave him the nickname, meaning Rivers in the Ibibio language.
“I was very close to my father. On several occasions, I would climb raffia palms alongside my father to understudy him. That is why I am the only one among my six siblings who took after him,” he said.
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However, he is worried that the traditional trade is on the verge of extinction. “None of my children wants to be a tapper,” he said.
For 28 years, Mr Nelson practised the trade across Akwa Ibom and Rivers states in the Nigerian south-south region, as well as in Bamenda in Cameroon, and the Central African Republic.
He makes a considerable profit from palm wine sales. The location of his community in the suburb of Uyo provides him with a large customer base, as vendors book supplies in advance.
“Everything I have is through palm wine. My two plots of land, one house, and a store where I collect rent to train my children are proceeds of palm wine. I took after my father because if tapping were not profitable, my father would not have been able to build this family house.
“I make at least N10,000 a day from selling palm wine. I sell a jar (10 litres) for N4000 and a bottle (60cl) for N400,” said Mr Nelson.
Mr Nelson proudly showed this reporter an apartment that was his inheritance from his late father. While his siblings rented out theirs, the tapper stores palm wine materials, including jars and bottles, in the apartment.
Raffia palm, palm wine, and scarcity
Raffia, oil, date, and coconut palms are members of the plant kingdom Plantae and family, Arecaceae. However, the raffia palm is on the brink of extinction.
Raffia palms are primarily grown near waters where swamps, bayous, and wetlands provide a suitable habitat. A few trees grown in residential areas are threatened by urbanisation, as landowners, particularly in cities, cut them down to allow for the construction of buildings, Samuel Akpan, a tapper from Nung Oku in Uyo, said. Mr Akpan said the raffia palm that this reporter met him tapping was the last in the community.
“I waited for seven years for this raffia palm to mature for harvesting,” Mr Akpan said, adding that it would have died off because there is no other tapper in the community to have attended to it.
For Johnson Effiong in Afaha Itam in Itu, palm wine, which decades ago was the most cherished drink, particularly in children’s naming ceremonies and traditional weddings, where it was the official drink used by the brides to introduce their grooms to their parents, has lost this value to modernisation.
“This is no longer the case,” said Mr Johnson. “The age-long tradition is replaced with exotic wines in glasses instead of the local beverage in a calabash.”
Raffia palms are becoming increasingly scarce in communities, while growers and tappers age and die without replacement, posing a serious threat to biodiversity.
As a result, palm wine and its derivative, Kai-kai, which is distilled through steeping, are becoming increasingly scarce. The scarcity has led to significant price increases, making the beverages susceptible to adulteration by vendors struggling to meet customers’ demands.
Why tappers are thinning in number
At least six tappers from four local government areas in the state interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES said their trade is on the brink of extinction, as their numbers decline drastically. The tappers also said the trade is the source of their livelihoods. However, none of them wants their children to follow in their footsteps. They claimed tapping is “very laborious.”
“Let me suffer and train them (his children) in school, but I don’t want any of them to take after me,” Mr Ebong from Ikot Aka in Mkpat Enin said. He inquired why a child would choose to pursue tapping as a profession after completing tertiary education, rather than making a name for the family, a feat he said he could not achieve.
“A decade ago, there were more than eight tappers in this community, but I am the only one left,” he said, acknowledging the thinning number of tappers.
He, however, said the situation was not peculiar to tappers.
“We used to have over 15 bicycle repairers within these neighbouring communities, but you can barely find one now.”
Like Mr Nelson from Itu, Friday Peter from Ibiono also took to tapping after his late father. Using a motorcycle, Mr Peter would ride several kilometres to Uyo to supply vendors. Mr Peter became angry when asked if he would love his children to take after him.
The tappers listed factors responsible for the declining number of tappers, including lack of succession, aging, death, refusal of young men to learn the trade, long years it takes raffia palm to mature, lack of research and investments by government and rural-urban migration, a key component of Akwa Ibom State Government’s blueprint: Arise Agenda, that Governor Umo Eno promised to address.
The impact of the declining number of tappers was evident in the number of raffia palms left unattended after reaching maturity in various communities visited.
Mr Nelson said there were over 12 tappers in his community when he began tapping, but only two were left: himself and his colleague, whom he said was sick. Three other tappers also confirmed this drastic decline in their communities.
For Mr Akpan, a tapper from Ikot Umiang in Mkpat Enin, it was “bad” that young men refused to engage in tapping when palm wine had become a “hot cake.” He recalled how a young man in his community began tapping without understudying any tapper. He said the raffia palm did not produce wine.
Why children of tappers not taking after their fathers
“They feel tapping is bad and laborious, but they enjoy drinking,” said Mr Nelson, triggering laughter from a young man, who came to his house to get some fresh palm wine.
Asked why he prefers drinking palm wine to tapping, the customer, Kufre Etuk, said the trade is not meant for “fresh guys” like himself.
Mr Akpan from Nung Oku could not understand why some youths were idle and sometimes got involved in crimes when they could tap raffia palm to earn a living.
A raffia palm takes about 12 to 13 years to mature for harvest and dies off between two and three months. Mr Nelson believes this is another reason some youths who are looking for “fast money” would not like tapping.
Utibe Sunday owns a “palmy joint” near Itam Divisional Police Station in Uyo. He said he would have taken the trade after his father, but regretted that his father died when he was young.
“A tapper in the village that supplies palmy in the city makes at least N16,000 a day,” he said, adding that is far better than what commercial motorcycle riders in the suburbs of Uyo make in a day.
“Any business that is not progressive, people would leave and do something else,” Trenchard Ibia, a professor of agriculture in the state, told PREMIUM TIMES, suggesting that the lack of modernisation in the way palm wine is produced discourages young people. Mr Ibia, a former commissioner for agriculture in Akwa Ibom, also said raffia palm is not among the crops listed by the Ministry of Agriculture for government intervention.
“Palm wine itself has some socio-cultural issues. Recently, the church has been criticising palm wine,” a measure, he said, discourages young men from venturing into the trade.
Iniobong Udoidem, a Catholic priest and professor of Philosophy, said his church is not against drinking palm wine but emphasises moderation.
Mr Udoidem said raffia palm seedlings were used to line boundaries in compounds, but it is not so anymore because “the upcoming generation are not interested, but they want to drink palm wine.”
To salvage the situation, Mr Udoidem recommended advocacy. “You can key into Governor Eno’s Arise Agenda and advise people to go back to the farm.
For Ini Akpabio, a professor of Agricultural Extension at the University of Uyo, “The young people are not interested in drudgery farming: you suffer and sweat, they call that agriculture -They are looking for agribusiness where you make your money.”
Mr Akpabio, a former dean of the Faculty of Agriculture in the university, said the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) does research on all kinds of palms but may be facing funding challenges.
“Our challenge in Nigeria is value addition. We like to sell things raw. The same thing we do in the petroleum industry – export crude oil and import petrol,” said Mr Akpabio
He recommended value addition to palm wine to increase its shelf life and funding for NIFOR for the production of improved seedlings. Mr Akpabio further recommended the engagement of extension officers, arguing that farmers would not be aware of the existence of improved varieties of raffia palm seedlings without the assistance of extension officers.
Economy of palm wine
Although it is challenging to quantify the contributions of palm wine to the economy due to a lack of data, there is still demand for the local beverage, driven by its nutritional value and antioxidant properties. Palm wine has a value chain; its derivative, Kai-kai, is believed to possess medicinal and herbal properties.
READ ALSO: SPECIAL REPORT: Decline in palm wine production leads to scarcity, adulteration
In the first part of this report, Frank Akpan, a “palmy joint” owner along Wellington Bassey Way in Uyo, said he began retailing palm wine in 2017 at N800 and N50 a bottle.
Seven years later (in 2024), the price had surged to N2,500 a jar and N250 a bottle. Less than a year later, the cost is N4,000 per jar and N400 per bottle.
Mr Sunday described the palm wine economy as a free-for-all business, as, according to him, anyone can become a tapper since the trade is tax-free.
(This is the second and final part of this report. You can read the first part here.)
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