The Nigerian Agricultural and Quarantine Service (NAQS) has raised an alarm over increase in the level at which vegetables originating from Nigeria are being intercepted and denied from entry the United States of America and the United Kingdom due to pest infection.
To this end, the Apapa Command of the NAQS yesterday kicked-off a 2-day sensitization workshop for exporters and importers on the effect of quarantine pests and diseases on agricultural commodities.
Speaking at the event in Lagos, Coordinating Director of the NAQS, Dr. Vincent Isegbe said the vegetables do not pass through strict quarantine test and this is why they are being rejected.
He also attributed it to activities of farmers getting vegetables from the open market not inspected by the agency and adding this to already-certified vegetables.
Isegbe urged exporters to patronise only farmers approved by NAQS because they already know how to package their products to meet international standards. He stressed that by so doing; Nigerian exports would go higher and attract more foreign exchange.
Isegbe commended the Apapa Command for organising the sensitization seminar, saying that the command out of other commands is taking this initiative to train their own stakeholders and interact with them.
Represented by the South West Coordinator of NAQS, Mr. Sunday Ikani, Isegbe said: "We are having quite a lot of issues with our export, right now we export a lot of vegetables to the UK and America, each time, the vegetable is good looking here, but when they get to their destination they are intercepted because of insects that look like white powder on the leafs, and we are doing all our possible best to make sure that these things are not there but why are they still present?"
"Before you can export vegetable, you must have a farm that is accredited by us, you cannot go to the open market and buy, on that farm, we have the sanitary and phytosanitary standard that would meet export, but some of these farmers still go to the open market when they discovered that there is demand for them and their own farm is not enough, at the end of the day, they go out and buy and join it, this is where we are having problems"
"This is why we need to enlighten them by way of training so that they would stop going into such practice" he said.
According to him, it is the requirement of the country that domestically produced agricultural food and health products and imported agricultural products satisfy certain minimum levels of quality, health and safety standards.
Stakeholders present included exporters, importers and their accredited agents, including other companies like Dangote, Flour Mills, fish and milk importers.
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