Photosanitary certificate facilitates smooth farm produce export

Is it not possible for NAQS to track the activities of agro exporters to know what they are exporting and importing into this country? As a standard procedure, if you are dealing with quarantine, you will register first to inform us about the kind of trade you are involved in, so that we can track […]

Is it not possible for NAQS to track the activities of agro exporters to know what they are exporting and importing into this country?
As a standard procedure, if you are dealing with quarantine, you will register first to inform us about the kind of trade you are involved in, so that we can track you and inform you of any pending issue ahead. It is a standard procedure for Nigerian Quarantine Services to register all our exporters, people whom we are dealing with day-by-day but if we don’t know you and you did not come to us, then you may have a problem.
 If an exporter gets the genuine Photosanitary Certificate from us and still has issue, we know that we are already there. Maybe it is just an administrative problem or the HS number is not there. That is something administrative that we can correct and intervene immediately.
How do you deal with those that are exporting without the photosanitary certificate?
We realize that those who do so use fake addresses, so it’s very difficult to track them. What we are doing as a result of this matter is that whoever is receiving the consignment we want to find out who sent the consignment. But the issue is this, in discussing that we realized that an agent could collect those consignments from someone and send, so if you don’t know the address of the agent or the agent does not give the correct address which means every other process of tracing the consignment will not be easy. So that is one challenge that we have but we are trying to find a way round it; so that either from the Nigeria or exporter’s end, we will be able to trace.
Apart from beans, which has been in the news, what other agricultural produce is finding it difficult to penetrate the European market?
The oil seeds such as groundnut, sesame are generally a concern worldwide because they can go rancid. We need to take care of aflotoxin or mycotoxin in general; these are of public health importance.
Every country in the tropics with high humidity cannot run away from fungi growing on agro-product without adequate care, the only thing to do is to control it. Even in advance country, as long as the place is warm and the temperature is accurate, fungi will always grow. For instance, if you put bread in the fridge without power supply for four to five days, it will grow fungi.
Commodity meant for export trade should be such that the level is minimal, safe for human consumption and for oil seed it is compulsory because the oil nature of those seeds encourage fungi. We need to take care of oil seeds if we want to export them but we have not had serious issues with that but we have to regularly monitor it to ensure that we meet the international standard.
What about vegetables because we produce vegetables massively in this country?
 In the past there was no vegetable export and most of the attempts were rejected and people lost money, until quarantine came in. We organized vegetables farmers and told them what exactly they should do, supervised their farms, at the point of cutting we are there and we arrange it in such a suitable manner and we do the inspection. The shipping is done immediately; to meet the demand overseas, so that our vegetables can get there fresh and for them to make good money. As of 2013 when we started the vegetable export project, they were making as much as $280,000, now am sure we should be clocking $2 to $3 million of our exports in dollars just from Lagos area. We have built a vegetable lounge in Kano. Kano state has good irrigation farming. Here in Abuja too, the vegetable lounge is almost completed, the one in Port Harcourt is completed. We have sent messages to people because there is direct flight from Kano, Lagos and Port Harcourt, so that we can begin to make money from vegetables because the weather here is fine, we can grow vegetables all around at the minimal cost. If other countries like Kenya are sending flowers to Europe and they make a lot of money from flowers, we can make a lot of money from vegetables. We are looking at culinary leaves (scented leaves) and herbs for export to the Eurasia.