Don’t Use My Company For Political Agenda – Factory Owner Mira Slams Kaduna APC

An Indian-Finish agro-businesswoman, Mira, has slammed Kaduna State All Progressives Party APC for false information and lies and using her tomato factory to push their political agenda, demanding that the party takes down its false tweet.
The party had put out a tweet with the picture of a tomato-processing factory, describing it as a newly built factory in Kaduna which just began its first production a year after construction of a 4 billion naira plant.
“This newly built Tomato Jos processing factory in Kaduna begins its first production, 1 year after construction of the N4bn plant began. Farmers who used to discard their excess yields during gluts in the North West will now have a steady demand for their produce to make paste”, the now-deleted-tweet reads
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Firing back, Mira, who claimed owner of the factory said the company is a private initiative and should not be used for any political agenda. “This is false information. I am the owner of this factory, which is a private initiative. Please take down this tweet and do not use my company for any political agenda. Thank you”.

Who Is Mira?

Mira says she didn’t exactly choose Nigeria, but guess Nigeria chose her. She said her journey into agriculture is similar and at such, she thinks agriculture chose her too! Mira grew up in Cambridge, MA with very little farming exposure. Her father immigrated to the US from India and mother from Finland had, and in 2008, she applied to work for an NGO that was focused on HIV/AIDS in developing countries and ended up in Nigeria. In a lengthy thread she narrated how she got to Nigeria and how she began Tomato Jos, her company. “My work often took me to various hospitals in northern Nigeria. I remember looking out the car window on a trip to Kano (it was probably December 2008) and seeing tomatoes covering the ground for miles and miles all around us! It looked like we were driving on a red carpet. I asked my driver what was going on and he told me that this was a seasonal glut- all the farmers’ tomatoes had become ripe at the same time, and market prices had crashed as a result. The farmers were trying to dry the tomatoes so they could sell them later”, she began.
“The image of all those tomatoes stayed with me for months afterward. I just couldn’t get it out of my head. At the same time, I was learning about Nigerian cuisine. Two of the most popular dishes in Nigeria are made with… you guessed it: tomatoes! Jollof Rice and Stew. As I started learning how to cook these two delicious, spicy tomato-based staples of Nigerian cuisine, I found that tomato paste was frequently used in addition to (and sometimes instead of) fresh tomatoes. But all the tomato paste was imported. The idea came to me pretty quickly: why not use all those tomatoes that farmers were already growing in northern Nigeria to make local tomato paste, instead of importing paste from Europe and China? Well, it’s one thing to have an idea and another thing altogether to act on it!”
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“I often told myself about the day that I’d run my own tomato factory. But I didn’t have the guts to quit my day job. It wasn’t until December 2013, 5 years later, that I finally took the plunge. By then, I was back in the US in grad school. I was applying to some pretty random jobs that I didn’t care too much about, and I was still talking to anyone who’d listen about my tomato paste idea. A friend of mine told me to quit yapping and get to work – so I did! I was one of very few @HarvardHBS students who decided not to look for a job during my second year of business school. Instead, I did a bunch of desk and field research, and invited some friends to help me put together a business plan for Tomato Jos. It was very clear to me that I wanted to run a social enterprise: a business that would do good for the surrounding community while also running at a profit. When I visited and interviewed tomato farmers as part of my research, I saw a need for education & financial support.“ Photos Credit: Twitter