ACTIONAID Nigeria, yesterday, revealed that Nigeria has been losing about N543.75 billion yearly in terms of foreign exchange for the past eight years due to the ban on the exportation of beans.

This amounts to about N4.35 trillion in the eight years. Addressing journalists at the end of its two-day conference, which focused on the validation of Nigeria’s National Agroecology Strategy, the General Manager, Kaduna Agricultural Development Agency (KADA), Muhammad Rili, also said that the ban, which is credited to the use of pesticides, was causing serious loss to the country’s agriculture sector and increasing unemployment.

Reading from the communiqué issued at the conference, he said: “Nigeria loses about N543.750 billion ($362.5m @ N1,500 per $) yearly in terms of foreign exchange to the ban on the exportation of beans in the last eight years, hence the importance of agroecology to help the country save money and export good and acceptable agricultural produce in the global market. Bearing in mind that any of Nigeria’s food rejected is naira lost, and unemployment increases.”

While stressing that the country’s inability to meet international food safety benchmarks resulted in multiple export rejections, depriving Nigeria of significant revenue, he called for urgent reforms that would restore Nigeria’s credibility in global markets.

He urged the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS) to urgently develop comprehensive pesticide policies aimed at phasing out highly toxic pesticides from Nigeria’s food system while also creating a safer and more sustainable farming practices for farmers, consumers and the environment.

Rili further advised that Nigeria must adopt a national safe and sustainable food strategy, with clearly defined targets to reduce the use of hazardous chemical pesticides by 50 per cent by 2030, 25 per cent by 2040, and no more than five per cent by 2050.

He raised fresh concerns over the deadly impact of pesticides use in Nigeria, revealing that despite producing 25 per cent of chemical pesticides worldwide, Nigeria accounts for 99 per cent of pesticide-induced deaths due to poisoning.

Citing global data, he noted that research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) showed that 385 million farmers suffered acute pesticide poisoning in 2019, with the majority of cases recorded in Asia and Africa.

“Seventy-five per cent of smallholder women farmers surveyed on the impact of highly hazardous pesticides in 2022 experienced some health challenges that they attributed to pesticide use. Symptoms like difficulty in breathing, dizziness, headaches, nausea, vomiting, eye problems, skin rashes, catarrh, diarrhoea and respiratory problems were among the most common health effects reported,” he said.

The summit, which brought together stakeholders from both public and private sector, farmers’ organisations and young people’s movements, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), donors and development partners, urged the government to establish and strengthen community seed banks across all states to ensure the preservation, safekeeping, regeneration and accessibility of Nigeria’s indigenous seeds/animal breeds.

These banks, according to the communiqué, will also serve as hubs for participatory and innovative breeding programmes that improve quality, enhance resilience to climate stress, and support the long-term conservation of agro-biodiversity.

The communiqué reads: “The Federal Government should invest more in agricultural research and innovation (invest in local science) to scale up agroecological practices and improve food security.

“Consumers and producers’ market on agroecological produced food should be prioritised by government to aid scale up. Government should promote land tenure reforms, resource rights for smallholder women farmers (SHWF) and young persons, as well as access to farmland schemes for youths and women.”