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Tag: Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS)

  • Rice smuggling: NAQS lauds FG’s plans to shut borders

    The Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) has commended the Federal Government’s plans to shut the country’s land border with a neighbouring country to curb rice smuggling into the country.

    Dr Vincent Isegbe, the Coordinating Director of NAQS, praised the government’s move in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Tuesday

    Isegbe said that the quarantine service was very in much support of the statement of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, regarding plans to shut the land border between Nigeria and a neighouring country to stem rice smuggling.

    “ Once the directive is given, we will make sure that it is passed to our officials in the affected border to ensure that no foreign rice enters the country.

    “Our personnel have to double their work to ensure that nothing comes across; it is added responsibility for them because they have to be extra-vigilant and they will be actively involved,’’ he said.

    Isegbe said: “One of major problems we are having is produce smuggling. As we speak, a neighbour of ours is importing more rice than China.

    “They do not eat parboiled rice, they eat white rice, they use their ports to try and damage our economy.

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    “We all know very well that this foreign rice has been stored for 10 to 15 years and there is no guarantee that the rice is free from carrying pest.

    “Any grain that has been stored for long time has propensity to have pest invasion, which means the exporters must have been treating the rice against pests for long and so, the rice is not good for human consumption.

    “Kebbi, Ebonyi and Niger states are doing very well in rice production and of recent, they have been producing good quality rice that is tasty, clean and nutritious. Besides, our rice mills now have destoning machines, so there is no fear of having stones in our rice.’’

    Isegbe also said that the increased consumption of local rice by Nigerians would save a lot of foreign exchange, hitherto spent on rice imports, for the country, while the savings would be used to fund more meaningful projects.

    “We should all encourage our rice farmers to produce more. We should also guard against the conversion of Nigeria into a dumping ground for all kinds of produce, including the harmful ones.

    “The exporters make a lot of money by dumping their produce here; we consequently suffer the economic and health consequences of the action, and in the end, we lose as a country,’’ he added.

  • NAQS urges importers of wild animals to get CITES certificates

    NAQS urges importers of wild animals to get CITES certificates

    Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) has advised potential importers of reptiles and other wild animals to obtain CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) certificates.

    Dr Vincent Isegbe, the Coordinating Director of NAQS, told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday that those who wanted to import wildlife should obtain CITES permits from Federal Ministry of Environment to avoid any embarrassment.

    He said that reptiles were some of endangered species which could not be imported or exported to any country without CITES certificates.

    “The essence of issuing CITES certificates is to make sure that every nation preserves its own species of wildlife.

    “So, anybody who wants to import, trade or move wild animals as pets from one country to another must register the animals.

    “The world wants to keep track of the movement of such endangered species,’’ he said.

    Isegbe said that the extant laws never forbade people from keeping wild animals as pets, adding, however, that those who wanted to have such pets must follow the due process.

    “Nobody says you must not have wild animals in your home as pets.

    “If you already have them at home and keep them as pets, you must register them; you need to have a permit to keep them.

    “If you have any of these species that have CITES certificates in Nigeria and you want to move to them to another country, you have to write and inform the country you are going to and seek its permission to move them.

    “We want to ensure that as a nation, we have national rules and regulations protecting these animals,’’ he said.

    Isagbe said that all the endangered species could also be moved as articles of trade to earn money.

    The coordinating director stressed that the animals which were recently intercepted in Cross River had no CITES certificates, no import permits and no export permits, adding that the animals were, therefore, illegal consignments.

    He said that the seized animals were still in the custody of the Federal Ministry of Environment, adding that investigations on their importation were still ongoing.

    News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the Nigeria Customs Service on July 26 intercepted three consignments containing 140 species of snakes and 660 other animals in Calabar, Cross River.

    NAN reports that the containers were brought in aboard a Cameroonian vessel, ‘MV Flesh,’ through the Calabar waterway.

    The containers reportedly contained snakes and other animals such as geckos, millipedes, hairy frogs and spiders.

  • NAQS will not be too visible at airports, says agric minister

    NAQS will not be too visible at airports, says agric minister

    The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, says the Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) will, henceforth, no longer be too visible at the nation’s airports.

    The minister said this in Abuja on Monday while addressing newsmen in reaction to the recent disagreement between the NAQS and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).

    He said that meetings were underway to address the conflict between the two Federal Government-owned agencies.

    He said that a meeting was also held with the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, with a view to bringing the two agencies to work together.

    Ogbeh said that the Federal Government was trying to reduce the number of its officials at the airport terminals.

    “The role of NAQS is very important in safeguarding the movement of agricultural products in and out of the country.

    “We had a meeting with the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, few days ago. NAQS will not be too visible in the airports because scanners are being installed where NAQS officials will be trained.

    “Once anything is traced to be food item that is trying to be exported at the airports, the NAQS officials will be invited to take a look at it.

    “The NAQS officials will ascertain whether the items have export certification.

    “In other countries, once a scanner reports that you are carrying food item, the airport officials will turn you off.

    “They would ask where you are taking the food to and whether you have certification for the export.

    “We will have problems with things coming into the country if NAQS is taken out of the airports completely.

    “Right now, there is a virus affecting banana in Ogun State; the virus entered from the Republic of Benin.

    “We have to shut down the transfer of all bananas from Ogun because if it moves elsewhere, it will destroy the plantain business in the country,” Ogbeh said.

  • Nigeria secure $100b pigeon pea export to India 

    The government of India has indicated interest in Nigerian farmers to export pigeon pea worth $100 billion to the nation, National Coordinating Director, Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), Dr. Vincent Isegbe has said.

    Isegbe said the Federal Government got the offer after conducting its Pest Crop Survey (PCS) for some agriculture commodity in conjunction with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and eventually got the offer from India.

    The NAQS coordinator disclosed this during an interview, in Abuja, adding that essence of the crop survey was to determine the kind of pest that affects a particular local agricultural commodity and proffer a solution to boost agriculture.

    Isegbe said: “We do what we call PCS. We have done for pineapple, sugar, rice, cashew, palm oil and of recent we did for the pigeon pea. We wanted to know the pest peculiar to some commodities, what extent and in what location nationwide so we keep data on them.

    “The government of India wanted a confirmation that we can export a pest-free pigeon pea to their country and even if we have pests, they will want to know which pest, to what extent and their location. That was the report that our group of scientists worked on. They eventually sent it to the government of India and they that saw that it was okay for them to import. That is why they said we have a market worth $100 million and we can export.”

    Describing the offer as a new opportunity to boost foreign exchange for the nation and create jobs, he added that the NAQS was already working with the pigeon pea value chain to meet demands of the Indian government.

    According to him, as member of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), the NAQS is responsible to stop the spread and prevention of pests including diseases and contaminants into and outside the country.

    He said the Service at its 56 stations across the country works in partnership with the Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) and airport officials to prevent foreign birds from entering the country.

    Speaking on bird flu invasion, Isegbe described the virus as a disease that could be transferred through infections, migrating birds and other forms of contaminations.

    He said the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, on daily basis conducts surveillance on the Avian Influenza (AI) virus and provides notices on status of AI in the country.

    Reacting to reasons farmers still fall victim to the AI infection, he explained that the virus was already in the country since its first outbreak in 2006.

    “It is the duty of Nigeria to ensure that new variant of bird flu did not come into the country since it came in between 2006 and 2008. The second wave of AI came in through migratory birds and we have wetlands. So as they pass their wastes into the water, ducks which serve principally as carriers hardly get infected but they spread the pathogen home and infect the local stocks.”

    However, he called for more sensitization of farmers to reduce further spread of the virus, stressing that sources of the virus are numerous.

    He emphasized that once a nation is declared free, there should be consistent effort to prevent a re-occurrence.