‘Why Europe, others reject Nigerian farm produce’
Dr Vincent Isegbe is the Coordinating Director, Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), whose responsibility involves the prevention of the spread of agro diseases and facilitation of international agro trade. He tells why some of our agricultural products are rejected in the international market. Excerpts: Nigerian exporters of agricultural produce are finding it difficult to penetrate […]
Dr Vincent Isegbe is the Coordinating Director, Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), whose responsibility involves the prevention of the spread of agro diseases and facilitation of international agro trade. He tells why some of our agricultural products are rejected in the international market. Excerpts:
Nigerian exporters of agricultural produce are finding it difficult to penetrate the international market because our produce are often rejected. Why are we having this reoccurring situation?
Nigeria is not an isolated country. We are signatories to World Trade Organisation (WTO). Being a member, we are duty-bound to observe the rules and regulations of trade which WTO has set. There are also specific minimum requirements for each of the countries. Countries may insist on high standard because of some reasons. They might have had bad experiences with certain disease that have caused so much damage or they decided not to accept low standard, so they raised their standard. If we are exporting our commodities from Nigeria to those countries, apart from the basic minimal standard set by WTO, each country has its basic requirements you must meet. For example, we export what they call ‘sweet beans’ to the EU. Now they have realised that there is high level of Dichlorvos (chemical insecticides), in the beans we export. We are not supposed to allow high level of chemicals to be used on the beans. Such beans should not be exported and because they find their way into the EU illegally, they are rejected. On reaching there, the certificate is not genuine, as a result of that, the country’s quarantine authorities will not allow that commodity to enter the country and the commodity will now be sent back. The maximum receiver level for the Dichlorvos is 0.01mg per kg, but ours was in excess of 0.03-4.3 level per kg, that is why we have that situation. So, to avoid the faking of our certificate, we have developed an electronic platform, where we issue this certificate electronically. Before you even ship your commodity, your certificate is already domiciled with the country, whether you show your certificate or not they already know that your product is coming.
Do you have enough manpower to control Nigeria’s conventional borders?
I would say we don’t have enough staff. We have about 660 staff and this is not enough to go round the 52 stations that we have. Don’t forget that the Nigeria Immigration Service established 33 new border posts and they ask us to complement in 2014. We have not been able to respond to those 33 new locations.
When it comes to farm produce rejection, people point fingers to NAFDAC. So whose responsibility is it to certify import or export of farm produce?
We had a workshop recently, sponsored by Nexim Bank in Makurdi, Benue State, NAFDAC and NAQS were there and we have been having several meetings. NAFDAC knows their mandate and same with NAQS. What the law says is that raw agricultural produce, including semi-processed agro products, is the responsibility of the Nigerian Quarantine Service. All processed or packaged food is the responsibility of NAFDAC.