Mende cane village: Many crafts, few buyers

From one end of Lagos to the other, villages are spread out with their peculiar historical underpinnings. Computer Village is the hub of mobile electronics and allied applications; Mechanic Village is the home for motor spare parts.

AFRICA, particularly Nigeria, is richly endowed with abundant natural, mineral and human resources. Among the many natural endowments Nigeria is blessed with is wood. The significance of wood to the comfort of man cannot be underestimated. Just like water, its uses are quite numerous and indispensable. Either in its raw or processed form, wood is indeed of enormous value.

Wood often refers to the processed product of timber trees, and has long been used for carpentry and furniture works. It comes in different species and can be obtained from different sources including forests and swampy areas. Significant among the varieties of wood found in riverine areas in Nigeria is cane wood.

This rich natural resource is a major source of livelihood and employment generation, as thousands of unemployed youths in Nigeria have found their ways into the business of cane furniture-making.

At the cane village located under the bridge of Maryland, in Lagos, it is a beautiful sight to behold the various forms cane wood can take when made into furniture. There, a visitor can find on display different forms of household items including chairs, tables, baskets, baby cots, wine carriers, flower vases and flower pots.  The various displays of the beautifully crafted products made from canes are expressions of the rich African culture and heritage. Apart from the lovely artistic designs, the uses of these cane products are quiet numerous.

 “They come in bundles from suppliers from Edo, Delta, Rivers and Epe in Lagos and their prices range from N900 to N1,400 per bundle, depending on the size of the canes,” Mr Saka Umar Babatunde, a cane weaver, said.

The canes, according to the vice chairman of the National Cane Weavers Association, Mr Dennis Omadie, are of two types: the normal cane and willow cane. The willow type of cane, when heated using a gas burner can be bent into different kinds of designs and shapes which it cannot naturally do Omadie  said, adding that both the normal cane and the willow cane are used together in crafting or carving.

“The willow type of cane can be heated, processed and used to frame chairs, baby cots, flower vases and so on. There are some chairs that the willow type of cane can’t be used to frame. We use both wood and cane. The wood is used to construct the skeleton or frames of chairs and tables while the canes are used to weave,” he said.

Asked how he comes up with the designs, Omadie said, “Most of what we produce is gotten from catalogues and furniture magazines. We select the designs and practise them until they are perfectly done. Our business entails a lot of hard work and division of labour.”

Speaking on the location on their business, the chairman of the cane weavers association, Mr Mark Ewhieberene said, “This place we are doing business has not been approved by either the Federal or state government. We were formerly occupying a particular land owned by an individual, but when the owner needed to use the land, he gave us a notice to quit. We were left with no option but to find another place to stay. So we decided to occupy under this bridge.”

The chairman of the association who lamented the various harassments they faced concerning their location pleaded with the authorities concerned to provide a permanent site for the association that will make accessibility easy for prospective buyers.

His words: “We pay a lot to stay in this place. We pay for trade permits to two local governments- Kosofe and Ikeja. They say it is a federal property we are occupying and we know it is not our permanent site. We face a lot of harassments here. We are pleading with the federal and state governments to save us the harassment by giving us like six hectares of land that will contain all of us and our equipment so that we can have a permanent place to do our business.”

Also speaking on the issue of location, Mr Babatunde reiterated the need for government’s intervention in securing an open and conspicuous place for the business to thrive. In his opinion, “this place wis too hidden for customers to locate us. Many of our customers don’t know how to get here.”

Also speaking on the issue of patronage for the business, Ewhieberene, however, said that people from within and outside the country came to buy the cane products.  He said, “This place is like the headquarters of the business as you get a wide variety of our products here. Even people who do the business in other places come here to buy the raw materials, that is, the cane bundles from us. They also come here to train. We also sell in bulk to people that want to resell.”

Ewhieberene, who said the cane business had been in existence in Nigeria for over 40 years, implored Nigerians to embrace locally-made products and services, saying this would help grow the nation economically and industrially, and also help develop small and medium scale businesses.

He charged the youth and unemployed to take advantage of the available resources at their disposal to make ends meet and try their hands on entrepreneurship and learn skills that would improve their standard of living, noting that “everybody will not do white collar jobs.”

Babatunde, who said he had been in the cane business from childhood, stated that the production process entailed much division of labour. He explained that while some persons construct, that is, the carpentry aspect of production that includes framing the skeleton of chairs or tables, some others weave or craft. This activity entails tearing and smoothening of the canes, before weaving and then others do the finishing and packaging. He said some of the members of the association also do supplies of the cane bundles.

Explaining the rough estimate of producing a set of chairs, Babatunde said 18 bundles of canes would complete the production with minimal upholstery, saying three to four bundles could make  a complete set of chairs if it would have full upholstery.

A set of full upholstery chairs, he said, would go for N120,000 to N150,000 while half upholstery go for N50,000 .

Speaking on financing  of the business,  Mavis Obugowa, a woman in the cane furniture business, said she sourced money to do the business personally, saying  “ though some banks usually come around to present loans packages to us, I don’t take bank loans. I finance my business through other sources like personal savings, contributions and sometimes proceeds from my sales.”

Obugowa, who said she also had been in the business from childhood, said her mother, who had been in the business for so long, taught her to do the business. She said some of the challenges faced in doing the business included location, financial constraints, sometimes difficulty in securing the cane materials, especially when there is fuel scarcity. She also noted some illegal fees being collected by some authorities due to the fact that where they were currently occupying was not their permanent site.

Obogowa, however, called on the government concerned to come to the association’s rescue by providing a permanent site for their business to thrive well. 

Source: 

Tribune.com.ng