With the outright rejection of Nigeria’s export farm produce in Europe, United States and other parts of the globe in recent times, the federal government’s hope of diversifying the nation’s economy away from overdependence on oil remains a forlorn hope, reports Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf
Nigeria relies on crude oil sales for 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings and 70 percent of government revenue. However, economic crunch occasioned by global oil slump slashed revenues, weakened the naira, pushed up inflation and stalled investment thus prompting the government to look to the non-oil sector to stem the tide.
Thus in the federal government’s quest to reduce overdependence on oil and increase its revenue stream, attention has naturally focused on the agricultural sector in recent times.
In the past, some of exportable commodities from Nigeria include but not limited to the following: cocoa, coffee, cashewnuts, rubber, kolanuts, palm kernel, coconuts, cotton, ginger, charcoal, cow horns and hooves, timber Cimelina, shrimps and prawns, sheanut, sesame seeds, garlic and gum Arabic, cassava, snails, honey, gallstones, chilli pepper, okro, etc.
The federal government had empanelled Technical Committee on Nigeria Yam Export Programme in Abuja, which was inaugurated in February to facilitate the acquisition of warehouses at the receiving destinations, address markets in Europe and Canada. It will also sensitise farmers and exporters on required international standards of yam before exportation.
The committee comprises representatives from the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), among others.
Expectedly, as a sign of government’s commitment towards achieving that objective, in June some consignment of yams were exported yams to US, United Kingdom and China with expected income put at about $8billion annually in foreign exchange.
An elated Chief Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development who spoke at the instance of the Technical Committee on Nigeria Yam Export Programme in Abuja at the time said the export would enable the country to earn foreign exchange from agricultural produce in order to substitute the oil and gas sector.
According to him, “Ghana is exporting yams but we are not, yet we account for 61 per cent of the world’s yam production. This programme has to succeed; we must sell whatever we produce to the world because we are buying too much. We allowed ourselves to be deceived.
“I saw the figures of Ghana’s earning from yam export and their targets for the future and it was quite impressive. If Ghana can aim at a few billion dollars a year from yams, there is no reason why Nigeria cannot quadruple that.
“I want this committee to begin to engage team of engineers anywhere in the world. Can we design a plough that can make the yam heap? We have to mechanise heap making, otherwise, in the next five years, because of our aging farmers, you will find out that we do not have yams again and we will get into fresh troubles,’’ he said.
Echoing similar sentiments, Prof. Simon Irtwange, the Chairman of the committee, said the committee was working with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) to train farmers and also improve some yam varieties.
The chairman said the committee had prepared a four-year action plan for the yam value chain programme in the country.
Ban! Ban!! Ban!!
But the country’s plan to diversify its economy has not been a smooth sail what with the gale of rejection of its exportable farm produce abroad.
From the EU, UK, USA, Canada and other parts of Asia and Middle East, it has been a story of one rejection or the other.
A report credited to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) had indicated that the EU rejected 24 Nigerian exported food products in 2016 for failing to meet the required standards.
Justification for rejection
Expectedly, Audu Ogbeh, Nigeria’s minister of agriculture has adduced reasons for the wanton rejection of Nigeria’s farm produce abroad.
Speaking on the heels of the United States of America’s rejection of yams export from Nigeria, Ogbeh said it was due to poor quality of the yams.
Ogbeh therefore, vowed to investigate both the exporting company and officials of the ministry’s department of quarantine for allowing low quality goods to the country.
He said: “Some consignments of yams were exported from Nigeria to the United States and according to reports we have today, they were found to be of poor quality.
“We will be investigating both the company that exported it and our quarantine department to check and find out why such a consignment left here.”
Nigeria does not rank amongst the world’s highest exporters of yam despite claims that the country have 60% of the world’s yam production.
Corroborating the minister, Mrs. Elizabeth Nwankwo, a yam exporter listed some challenges facing exporters to include inadequate transportation and lack of quality seedlings.
She explained that inadequate storage facilities also contribute to the rejection of the country’s agricultural produce at the international markets.
Nwankwo expressed optimism that there would be zero rejection of the country’s agricultural produce if the challenges are tackled.
Role of regulatory agencies
Speaking with a cross-section of experts involved with standards and regulation of the food export sector, they confided in The Nation at the centre of the crisis of rejection is the issue of non compliance of prospective exporters.
Firing the first salvo, Dr. Barth Ugwu, Technical Adviser to the Director General of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), he said the SON has a template in place but lamented that majority of the exporters circumvent the system.
According to him, the SON has strict standards and procedures which are in line with international best practices but the regulation can only be as effective if it is being complied with.
He said Nigerian had huge potentials in the area of agriculture and that the agency was determined to help boost export of Nigeria agriculture products, right from the farms through the entire value chain. The agency is doing this well aware of the challenges of processing of these products, and the fact that input such as fertiliser are also expensive to procure.
Specifically, he said the SON Food and Chemistry Accredited Laboratories had been recently recertified and has large scope to test agriculture products.
Speaking in the same vein, the spokesman of the National Agency for Food And Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) Dr Abubakar Jimoh has reiterated the agency’s commitment to setting standards in the food and allied sector.
In a telephone interview with our correspondent at the weekend, Jimoh explained that NAFDAC’s standard and internationally accredited laboratories were available for prospective exporters for proper certification.
He said that the screening and certification of any product for export by NAFDAC was free of charge in spite of facilities, personnel and chemical reagents being used to conduct such tests.
“The federal government is doing this as a deliberate policy to encourage our exporters and to satisfy international standards for exports.
“We are now appealing to our exporters not to run away from product certification of NAFDAC, it is free and we don’t charge anything for such service.
“We have adequate personnel and equipment to carry out such responsibility in the country,’’ Jimoh said.
The spokesman lamented that the action of exporters has put the country’s image in bad light and also cause a huge loss to the exporters themselves which had implication to the economy of the country.
According to him, NAFDAC had six functional laboratories that conduct various types of products test across the country.
Jimoh said that the agency had two functional laboratories in Lagos, one each in Kaduna, Agolo in Anambra, Maiduguri and Port Hacourt, while the one in Calabar had not been completed.
He disclosed plans to establish another laboratory in Benue to serve exporters in the North Central part of the country.
Jimoh, who is also the NAFDAC Director Special Duty, noted that the laboratory in Lagos had been accredited internationally and any product that gets approval from such lab would be recognised globally.
He confirmed that the EU had certified the laboratory in Lagos and considered it as meeting the world standard.
He disclosed that Kaduna laboratory was inherited by NAFDAC from the Federal Ministry of Health and later gutted by fire, but that the agency had built a new lab.
The spokesman added that the Kaduna laboratory was built to serve all agricultural farm produce coming from the north for screening and certification and exportation.
He added that the laboratory has required facilities and equipment and was now awaiting international accreditation.
According to him, Agolo, a regional laboratory built by NAFDAC and inaugurated sometime in 2010 by former president Goodluck Jonathan, also has the capacity to serve exporters from the South East region.
“The EU team that visited our lab in Lagos about a year and half ago were happy with what they met on ground.
“We have two laboratories in Lagos, the one in Oshodi deals with food products, micro toxic, High Liquid Performance Chromatography and pesticide residues, while the one in Yaba deals mainly on drugs.
“Laboratory is capital intensive and we cannot have it in every state; therefore those we have now serve states close to them.
“We have the capacity and we are well prepared to ensure all our exported products from the country get NAFDAC’s clean bill of health as an agency charged with responsibility of quality control,” he said.
Jimoh also urged the Nigerian Customs Service to continue to cooperate with NAFDAC in ensuring that such products were not smuggled out of the country.
Light at the end of the tunnel
Thankfully, the European Union’s three-year ban on the importation of dry beans from Nigeria has pushed the federal government to commence an advocacy on agricultural quality control and standardisation across the six geo-political zones of the country.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh had last weekend said that the nationwide advocacy had become necessary in order to stop further export sanctions and notifications on the country’s agro products from the EU.
“Between 2016 and 2017, about 48 notifications were received from the EU on our export goods (nuts and seeds as well as fruits and vegetables) due to aflatoxin and many other contaminants, either biological or chemical,” the minister stated.
Ogbeh spoke in Lagos at the commencement of the quality control and standardisation campaign for the South-West zone.
The EU had banned the importation of Nigeria’s dry beans, sesame seeds, melon seeds, fried fish, meat and peanut chips, among others, from entering European countries till June 2016 but later extended it to three years, starting from 2016 on the ground that the produce contained high level of pesticide considered dangerous to human health.
Represented by the Coordinating Director, Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service, Vincent Isegbe, the minister lamented that the ban was extended from one year to three years when the federal government and the relevant agencies were working to ensure that the June 2016 deadline to lift the ban was met.
Ogbeh, however, said, “The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has not had it this good in the past as regards agricultural quality control strategies, thus aggressively addressing the culture of quality in the agro sector. Previous efforts of the ministry were only geared towards increased cultivation and output per unit area with less emphasis on quality and standards of our produce.
“Nigerians also deserve good, safe and quality agro outputs for consumption, which should be globally accepted like their counterparts across the globe. I wish to commend our administration on this giant stride and far-sightedness by revolutionising agriculture in Nigeria with more effort on food safety and quality assurance if our agricultural commodities.”
Isegbe recalled that the presidency had set up an inter-ministerial committee on zero-reject of the country’s agricultural produce to the international markets in 2016.
The committee, according to him, is to look into issues that led to the suspension at the first instance and what caused the extension of the ban as well as to find solution to the problem.
He said, “The committee, comprising the service, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Federal Ministry of Health, among others, has made progress so far.
“Excess agricultural produce is meant to be exported since we are diverting from oil to agriculture. The main objective is that whatever goes out of this country should not return to us either inform of rejection of low standard quality. The three years ban will expire in 2019 but we are working round to ensure the ban is lifted in 2018.”
Meanwhile, stakeholders in Nigeria’s agricultural sector are evolving proactive strategies aimed at improving the quality of processed goods to overcome the ban on some produce exported from the country.
This is contained in a special survey conducted by journalists on the ban placed on some 25 exportable produce by the EU between 2015 and 2016, in which respondents across the South West states and Kwara fielded questions in separate interviews.
In Abeokuta, the chairman of the Ogun branch of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Mr Segun Dasaolu, said farmers were engaging in effective collaborative efforts with the state government in the area of training.
This, he said, was to ensure they were acquainted with the international standards and requirements for agricultural produce.
He urged the federal government to step up quality control management system for agricultural products to enhance their acceptability in the global market, adding that government must ensure through its relevant agencies that various food law requirements must be complied with during production, while the entire process in the agricultural chain must be complied with.
Prof. Olufemi Peters, executive director, Nigerian Stored Products Research Institute (NSPRI), Ilorin, noted that the EU may have banned locally smoked fish from Nigeria because of its health hazard.
“One of the main disadvantages of the way peasant farmers smoke their fish is the presence of what we call polyaromatic hydrocarbon in the fish,’’ said the don who added that the institute has designed smoking kiln that is environmentally-friendly and free from polyaromatic hydrocarbon.
Peters added that NSPRI smoking kiln is hygienic and free from any form of health hazard, adding that fish smoked by the kiln could compete with any in the world. “Once there is mass production of the kiln, fish farmers could export their smoked fish to any part of the world,” he said.
Also speaking, chairman of AFAN in the state, Mr Olawale Ajibola, said lack of basic techniques in processing farm produce was responsible for the rejection of some produce by the EU.
“One major reason why those food items were rejected is because they found out after testing that the chemicals used for preservation were either too much or dangerous to health”, he noted.
In Enugu State, there is serious move by Pepper farmers in Nsukka to export the crop popularly called “Ose Nsukka” abroad with a view to making more revenue from the crop.
Already, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State has charged an Agro exporting firm (ABX World) currently partnering with the Nsukka Chamber of Commerce and the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) to power the commercial production of the yellow pepper for all-year round export.
According to a projection by the chief executive of the agro-exporting company, Capt. John Okakpu, within a five-year period, an estimated turnover value of about N12billion would be realised from the cultivation and export of the Nsukka yellow pepper, a development that would promote the nation’s agricultural history and potentials.
Chairman of the committee set up by the Nsukka Chamber to execute the project, Chief Matthias Omeh, a former commissioner for Agriculture in the state, explained after the meeting with the governor that the chamber had done a research on “Ose Nsukka” and had invited the agro-exporting company to partner with it for its realisation, adding that the current move was to effect a commercial production of the yellow pepper for export to the UK and the USA since it is now accepted all over the world.
“With a conservative estimated turnover value of N1.6billion in the first year, N3.86billion in the third and about N12billion in the fifth year of cultivation of this crop, it is obvious that if yellow pepper gets the right attention of government and the producers get the needed collateral motivation in terms of credit funding and infrastructure then Eldorado is surely at sight,” he stated.
Also the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) in Kano has hinted of plans to convene a meeting with producers of agricultural products affected by the EU rejection policy to reverse the development.
The state AFAN Secretary, Alhaji Garba Bichi, told NAN in Kano that the meeting would draw all stakeholders from across the state in order to find a lasting solution to the problem.
“We have decided to convene a meeting with all those affected by the EU rejection on some agricultural products in order to address the issue. The rejection is as a result of the failure of producers to meet standards due to incorrect application of pesticides and other agrochemical substances.
“So we feel it is necessary to meet with affected farmers and other stakeholders to find a way out,” Bichi said.
The scribe said the meeting was expected to come up with useful recommendations for immediate implementation and if possible seek technical advices from experts.
