Henceforth, the Federal Government will name individuals and agencies behind export of substandard agricultural products.
According to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, in the spirit of anti-corruption posture, the Federal Government “shall not spare the offenders for causing our beloved nation avoidable losses and unnecessary embarrassment through export of sub-standard products”.
Speaking at a high level meeting in Abuja on the validation of Nigeria’s strategy for single quality control management system, the Minister explained that henceforth, all exporters of agricultural produce/food items will follow laid down rules by complying with the prescribed global standards.
Chief Ogbeh said: “We shall ensure that we make quarantine services available everyday in all our airports and seaports.
“We shall strengthen our oversight regulatory authorities to enable them live up to their respective mandates. We shall increase investment in the enabling/supportive infrastructure and services for ensuring quality control, certification and standardization”.
Emphasising need to curtail export of substandard products, the Minister said: “In a globalized world, and in this era of free trade, nothing is more embarrassing and tragic than to continue to have Nigerian goods and food items rejected in the world market”.
He added: “Unfortunately, we have reacted to this event in the past with our usual lack of seriousness. This, to me, is hugely troubling. We may have treated the rejection by other economies as prejudice and discrimination. To me this is unwise and self-defeating. The truth is that we have never seriously paid attention, especially since the dissolution of the marketing boards, to the question of standards as demanded by humanity elsewhere, especially in the developed economies and emerging markets.
“We may have been able to survive all these years because revenues were coming from oil and gas. The plain truth is that the boom era of huge oil revenues is gradually coming to an end. It is a painful reality which, coincidentally, presents us a unique opportunity to innovate and do things differently.
“We must, therefore, embrace a new paradigm of development by harnessing opportunities elsewhere, especially in agriculture, to rapidly diversify the national economy for inclusive growth and sustainable development”.
