Aspiring MP Atiku to Turn Ayivu West into a Cocoa Growing Division
Atiku while addressing his voters in Adumi on Thursday. Photo Credit Andrew Cohen Amvesi
ARUA. The Ayivu West Division MP hopeful, Bernard Atiku has promised to change the lives of his people through cocoa growing.
Once elected back in office, Atiku, the former Ayivu county MP, has vowed to turn Ayivu West into a cocoa growing Division.
He intends to establish cocoa nursery seedbeds in each of the 18 wards in Ayivu West Division and distribute them to the locals for free.
Speaking during the formation of his campaign team at the former Adumi sub-county headquarters on Thursday, May 29, 2025, Atiku said he wants each household to at least plant 500 cocoa seedlings for the beginning.
“We are lacking a perennial crop here in Ayivu, a crop we would say can drive poverty out of a household, a crop that people can harvest year in year out to be able to get money to pay school fees, to buy medicine for the members of their household and to upgrade from grass thatched houses to may be iron sheet roofed houses or even with tiles or permanent buildings as homesteads,” Atiku said.
“So, we have identified cocoa as a perennial crop that is going to do very well among our people in Ayivu West. I have pretested it myself, I have a plantation of about 12 acres which I planted five years ago and they are doing very well. So, that means if each homestead can get 500 cocoa seedlings, in my five years in office, and in the next ten to twenty years, there will be no poor Ayivu,” Atiku assured the locals, who welcomed him with joy.
According to Atiku, one acre of cocoa gives a homestead between Shs50m to Shs60m per year.
“Now if you ask any homestead here who earns between Shs20m to Shs50m annually from the garden, you will find nobody but we have vast and fertile land. And cocoa is inter-croppable; you can plant cocoa with bananas, you can plant maize, you can plant it with cassava, and in the third to fifth year, the moment the cocoa yield begins to increase, people will begin to value cocoa and give it the attention that it deserves and even start irrigating it,” he explained
Atiku said the cocoa seedlings he intends to establish in each ward should be able to generate between 200,000 to 5,000,000 seedlings each year.
“Now if we are able to supply up to 5,000,000 seedlings of cocoa in each ward, we will have changed the economic status of the homesteads in Ayivu West Division,” Atiku remarked.
Besides the cocoa growing campaign, Atiku is also going to rally everybody in Ayivu from household level to ensure that each household has at least one or two educated children.
On the other hand, Atiku said he equally intends to continue with the land registration project for the people of Ayivu West to legally secure their land.
“I acquired land surveying equipment which is still with me and I intend to recruit back the surveyors who will help our people. These machines will be stationed at a central place. We will work village by village and ensure that we title land in all those villages so that people begin to know how much land they have and what is the size of this land, who are the neighbors because land titling solves a lot of problems,” Atiku said.
The decision Atiku took to bounce-back excited the locals of Ayivu West Division with many pledging to support him until he goes through the 2026 general elections.
Philip Ajiyo Acile, the Goti cell chairperson, said they are happily welcoming Atiku back because of his good ideas and representation in Parliament.
“When Atiku was in Parliament, he worked very well, he passed two laws including the one that protects children from child sacrifice. He made us proud as the people of Ayivu. Now with his program of cocoa growing, I’m so much excited because it will get us out of poverty. I will support Atiku to go back to Parliament by all means,” Acile vowed.
Jeniffer Asara, another resident, said she feels very happy that Atiku is coming back to represent the people of Ayivu West Division.
“In the past when he was in power as an MP, we saw what he did good for us which we have missed in the last four, now coming to five years. While in Parliament, Atiku sponsored children from the entire former Ayivu County in different schools; others are now Doctors, Engineers and so on. Atiku also constructed the Ayivu Division headquarter building which is still standing there at Onduparaka, he supported churches and schools, and that is why we want him back,” Asara said.
For Joyce Alurile, a resident of Etufe cell in Kati ward, Atiku’s coming is a blessing because he is the right person to educate the people of Ayivu on the importance of this city and how they can benefit from it as opposed to the leaders who are always fighting the creation of Arua city.
Similarly, Christopher Obia, a retired police officer, also a resident of Ayivu West Division, said there is proof that Atiku is a very good leader.
Obia noted that Atiku used to lobby projects like road construction, rural electrification and the different government programs from the Parliament for the people of Ayivu which has not been the case this term.
“So, we want Atiku to go back because in these four years, we have missed a lot. There were some projects which he lobbied from the Parliament which have not been implemented up to now. So, we are begging him to go back and do the remaining projects which he had lobbied,” Obia stated.
Atiku, who recently crossed from the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) to the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party will first tussle it out with the incumbent Ayivu West Division MP, John Lematia in the coming NRM party Parliamentary primary elections before proceeding to the general elections.
I think majority voters, especially in West Nile don’t know their civic importance and rights. What do you learn from this kind of statement, “we are begging him to go back?” As a voter, how can you “beg” an aspirants to return to parliament? Who is more desperate going to parliament, the voters or aspirants? Civic education should be reintroduced in the school curriculum.
Brilliant ideas for economic empowering of the constituents. But my concern with our current breed of politicians who come promising heaven on earth if elected, but the moment he gets the votes and is into parliament, the rest is history only to resurface when it is another election cycle. The fact is that they are very insincere. They don’t mean what they say. Can Bernard Atiku be trusted on his cocoa promises? We would have more confidence if he was telling us that in the last 4 years he has been distributing cocoa seedlings to farmers in the region. And is promising to expand immensely if he is elected an MP. We now demand for aspirants who tell voters of what they have done and are doing as opposed to aspirants who campaign on promises of, “if elected I will do this and that…” Voters are no longer interested in futuristic ideas. In which 90% of them remain up on the sugar candy mountain.