A large consignment of vegetables and other edibles exported from Nigeria to the United Kingdom, were at the weekend returned due to failure to meet up with international procedures.

This is coming exactly 10 months after some consignment of yam exported to the United States, were also rejected due to poor quality. The produce, estimated to be about ₦5m include pumpkin leaf, waterleaf, bitter leaf, local pear, garden eggs, wrapping leaf and others.

The Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), which disclosed this at a press briefing, said the produce was rejected on the ground that they were not accompanied with phytosanitary certificate and not due to poor quality NAQS Head of Inspection, South West Zone, Dr Moses Adewumi, said internationally, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) requires that in the movement of agricultural produce or commodities around the world, the commodities should be free from pest.

“In this case, we have up to about 41 International Standard For Phytosanitary Measures (ISPM), which guides the movement of commodities.“When you are sending commodities outside the country, the international procedure is that it must be accompanied with the phytosanitary certificate, that is the health of the commodity being exported. Any commodity not accompanied by the certificate is illegal.“That is why all these consignments were returned to the country because most of them were not accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate.”

He noted that the NAQS was trying to make exporters and people coming to the business to be aware that they needed to get the certificate when sending Agric commodities outside Nigeria.

SOURCE: https://brandspurng.com/u-k-rejects-nigerias-vegetables-other-edibles/

Na wa o...

Even seeds are smuggled in without phytosanitary certificates. The vegetables may not be bad, but lack of proper documentation was the main reason they were returned. Nigerians always finding short cuts. If thorough investigation is carried out, one will be greatly surprised how many tons that had been smuggled out. And this is not going to stop them from trying to smuggle out again. It means that some powerful people are involved. In a country where things work well, heads should start rolling on the floor. Some bosses should start getting really afraid of losing their jobs. Not in Nigeria. What is wrong with Nigerians that they always want to find short cuts.

On the other hand, this Buhari regime has made many simple things extremely hard. Maybe exporters no longer want to pursue getting the certificates because the process is now cumbersome. Red tapes everywhere which give more avenue for looting, bribing and corruption. One of the reasons I like Jonathan is that he made everything very simple.

I am not a politician, I am a farmer. Just talking from the view of farmers. Buhari is very good is making solid red tapes. And in many cases, they make some selected people extremely wealthy. I think Prof. Osinbajo should be try to look into this and convince his boss to listen to the masses. So, no one should turn it to PDP vs APC issue.