Minority MP threatens naked protest if cocoa prices are cut again
The tensions simmering in Ghana’s cocoa sector have produced one of the most colourful and pointed political threats in recent memory, and the Ranking Member of Parliament’s Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Committee is making clear he is not joking.
Dr. Isaac Yaw Opoku, Member of Parliament for Offinso South, issued a stark warning to the government during a visit to cocoa farmers at Kunsu in the Ahafo Ano South West District, declaring that any further reduction in cocoa producer prices would be met with a protest unlike any Parliament’s minority caucus has staged before.
“Because we are quite over the first-ever in Ghana’s history price cut of the cocoa, they think we are toothless, so they are planning to reduce it further,” Dr. Yaw Opoku said. “I will strip naked and, together with the minority, protest in ‘adagya mu’ and march to the Presidency to demand what is best for the farmers.”
The statement, dramatic as it is, reflects genuine and deepening anger within cocoa farming communities, anger that the minority caucus has been channelling through a five-day tour of the Ashanti Region, where lawmakers are engaging directly with farmers over pricing concerns and the broader direction of cocoa policy.
Dr. Yaw Opoku’s frustration centres on what he describes as an inconsistency between the government’s stated justifications for the price cut and the revenue figures its own institutions have reported. The government reduced the producer price from GH¢3,625 to GH¢2,587 per 64-kilogram bag earlier this year, partly citing a strengthening cedi as a factor. But the MP pushed back on that logic with a pointed question rooted in numbers.
“They continue to claim that the value of the dollar has decreased. However, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana states that the government generated revenue of $3.9 billion USD from cocoa sales… If the government has access to such a substantial amount, yet remains indebted to cocoa farmers to the tune of 11 billion cedis, the question arises as to why payment cannot be made,” he said.
The arithmetic, in his framing, does not add up, and farmers who are owed money while being told prices must fall are understandably losing patience with the explanations they are being given.
Beyond the immediate pricing dispute, Dr. Yaw Opoku used the visit to hold the NDC administration to account for campaign commitments that farmers say they are still waiting to see fulfilled, including a cocoa pension scheme and the “one cocoa farm, one polytank” initiative, neither of which has materialised.
For Ghana’s approximately 800,000 cocoa farming families, the combination of a historic price cut, delayed payments, and unfulfilled promises is accumulating into a crisis of confidence that political engagement tours alone are unlikely to resolve. The minority caucus is betting that sustained pressure, and, if necessary, the most visceral form of public demonstration, will force the government’s hand before the situation deteriorates further.
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