The number of fertiliser blending plants in the country has grown to more than 90 in nine years, from 2016 to 2025, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has said.

The Chief Executive Officer of NSIA, Aminu Umar-Sadiq, stated this at the yearly Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI) roundtable held in Abuja.

Umar-Sadiq said the PFI is a backward integration strategy for the local production and supply of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) in Nigeria.

He stressed that, having run the organisation for six impactful years, it was time to hand it over to the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, which owns it.

“We have run PFI to where we are in a position to transition the programme to the owners of the vehicle, the Ministry of Finance Incorporated. We have worked over the last two years to have a two-fold transition process.

“So, the purpose of this stakeholder roundtable is to bring all of the different actors in the fertiliser ecosystem together to make sure that we communicate this transition in operatorship of the programme,” he said.

On how to mitigate adulteration and institutionalise quality control in the fertiliser ecosystem, Umar-Sadiq argued that the time to empanel a strong regulation by the ministries of finance and their agriculture counterpart to stem the tide is now.

“I think we need a very strong regulator in the finance and agriculture ministries to stop this practice. We also need consequences so that people who are caught have to pay. I think we now need to transition to the era of quality control, but quality control with real consequences for those who want to shortchange the system. Moving from four blending plants to 94, that is hope for food production in Nigeria,” he said.