Mr Igbinosun said, “Our association has been blocked from accessing authorities at the apex bank. We have applied for funds to resuscitate the dying natural rubber subsector but we are continually told that rubber is not the priority of the federal government. This is painful and tiresome.
“They said because rubber has a very long gestation period, therefore they have no funds to appropriate except for rice and other immediate economic crops that yield early enough.”
Igbinosun explained that rubber was so useful across households and businesses.
He said, “The health institutions depend on byproducts of rubber; our shoes, surgical gloves, mattresses, car tyres, name them, are all rubber. Yet they want to collectively kill the subsector. They should know that, ‘No Rubber, No Nation’.”