Lack of testing laboratory, bane of Nigeria’s agric products, says Aganga

THE Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, yesterday said Nigeria could not export yam to the United Kingdom (UK) owing to non-availability of laboratories to test it here.

He said those who exported goods from Nigeria went to Ghana to get them tested before they were sent out of this country and the credit usually goes to Ghana because the goods were coming from Ghana.

Aganga, who stated this yesterday in Abuja at the commissioning of the office complex extension of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), said Nigeria’s products were being treated with disdain and rejected abroad due to lack of laboratories.

He stated with the recent commissioning of two laboratories in Lagos, which would cover all agriculture produce in the country, he was optimistic that products being exported from Nigeria to other countries will command some level of respect and increase in the financial status of producers.

He said when agriculture produce are exported to UK, the importer is charged to get them tested, and when they don’t meet international standards, the goods are automatically rejected and it then becomes a burden on the importer to bring them back to Nigeria, adding that goods brought to the UK from Ghana were not being treated with disdain the way Nigeria products do just because of lack of testing laboratories in Nigeria.

In another development, Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State has disbursed N9 million grant to 18 agro-based co-operative societies selected from six local councils, which participated in the 2013 local council conditional grants scheme.

The grant was received by the beneficiaries through the Office of Inter-governmental Affairs and Multilateral Relations in Akure, the capital city of the state.

Distributing the cheques to the beneficiaries, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Millennium Development Goals and Head of Intergovernmental Affairs and Multilateral Relations, Mr. Oladunjoye Oyewunmi, said that the programme is the second phase of the innovative approach.

He expressed belief that the grants given to the farmers would encourage and sustain their interest in agriculture, improve standard of living, food production and enable them to buy necessary materials that will increase their production.

Aganga further said: “The National Quality Policy (NQP) we would be having in the country for the first time was co-ordinated without any external influence or consultant, everything was done by the technical members of staff of SON. We just commissioned the new internationally-accredited laboratories in Lagos. This is the first time ever that we would have such an accredited laboratory with such scope, twelve scopes in the country. What this means is that if we are saying we want to diverse the economy, we need to increase our income from non-oil products but there is no way we can do that without having the right quality infrastructure such as the laboratories.”

In the same vein, director-general of SON, Joseph Odumodu, said the idea to put up the building on the space of land within the premises which used to serve as a car park stemmed out of the constraint the organisation had after some of its members of staff where ejected without notice from a temporary building they were using in Maitama.

Responding on behalf of the beneficiaries, Mrs. Stella Omoniyi thanked the government for disbursing the grant, assuring that the fund would be judiciously used to boost agricultural production, reduce poverty, enhance better living condition and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).