The Director-General, Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), Dr. Vincent Isegbe, in this interview with JOHN OBA, said despite the Covid-19, pandemic, Nigeria still finds ways to export agricultural produce.
The pandemic has changed a lot in our present world and I am sure you already have your work cut out, how are you coping?
I don’t think anybody will say, he is having the best of times now during this COVID-19, because it has changed the way we do things normally, there is a new normal now like some people would say, on how to address issues, it has made us to think outside the box, because of the consequences of COVID-19. How we need to take advantage of COVID-19, those are the things that are in the minds of every management in order to address the effects and consequences of COVID-19 as it affects the organisation.
So, I will say yes, COVID has affected us for good and it has affected us for bad. For good in the sense that, it has made us to look furthermore than we were thinking about because new challenges cropped up and we have to find ways of addressing it as quickly as possible. So that the effects on Nigeria exporters, farmers, sanitary and phyto-sanitory consequences does not affect public health as the case may be. So these are some of the challenges that we have.
Secondly, we take advantage of the fact that, even if there is COVID-19, people will still have to eat. Some of the farms in Europe don’t have labour to go and harvest, plant or maintain. You saw recently on online platforms how most of the farms there have ready, flowers, crops, but nobody to harvest them and some were just running their tractors over these farms to turn what they have produced to manure.
But here, we can still plan, because the effect of COVID is not as devastating as it is in Europe and in the US. People could still go to their farms, so it’s an opportunity for us to see how we can export some of our fresh produce. But again, which airline would carry it? And if you arrive at the border of those countries, would they allow you in? Those were the challenges we had at the first week, and thank God, that we got the express approval of the government to resume export.
Since the government gave the order for your men to go back to their duty post, can you quantify the amount of export Nigeria has done?
Ok, that is part of the challenges too. How many airlines are operating now? You can hardly find any designated cargo airlines coming in, except the ones that we have pre-arranged. What we have done in collaboration with other exporters is that the exporters are beginning to group themselves to know what quantity on daily or weekly bases so that they can get a chartered flight that would come and carry them.
But don’t forget the charted flight coming may likely come empty, this will double the cost. This too has to be considered in whatever we are doing. But we are ensuring that we take full advantage of the regular flights that come into the country. Also because of the buck, we are using the seas. Now there are lots of activities going on in the shipping lines. But because of the delicate nature of products like yam, the airlines are preferred.
Recently, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Sabo Nanono announced government provision of N13 billion for the control of pests, while the Nigeria National Accreditation System calls for quality food control. As an agency that is in the middle of all these, what part are you playing?
Our agency is in charge of certification of export and import goods, now for the pest you mentioned is strictly for grasshoppers and quala birds, it is not to be applied directly on agricultural goods, and from what I read from the papers, it will go for the use of aerial spraying and going to where those quala birds host, so that they would die off, so they are not likely to affects the food chains.
And where they are to be spray on the crops directly, we have specific chemicals with short residual life shelf, that would not affect the food chains. It is not all chemicals that can be spray aerially. Even if the chemical is the best that can kill those pest, how it affects the public health or the veterinary sector is considered in the choice of the chemical that is used. The aerial spray is done by the ministry, that is outside the scope of our agency.
Recently, the Vice President commissioned a 200,000 capacity yam storage facility in Benue state. What part is your agency playing to ensure that the yams are safe for export?
Generally for the export of yams, we certify and inspect, unfortunately we were not invited to the commissioning, infact, we saw the notice, a day before the commissioning. But our officers are on ground in Makurdi, so anytime inspections and certification for the exportation of the yams is to be done, Quarantine will be involved. Remember, we have a zonal office in Makurdi, so naturally, they wouldn’t do any export without the involvement of the Service. The facility may be built to store the yams, but you know NAQS is in the teams of the taskforce on yam export. But I don’t know much about the structure of the facility.
But even there are ways yams should be stored if it is to be exported, and your agency has expertise in this regard?
Yes, like I said, we have a zonal office in Makurdi, if and when they want to do the export, they would involve us. And at one stage or the other, my people will be invited to handle this.
Is your agency doing anything to sensitise farmers on the Conservation Biological Control ways of fighting pest? That is, inviting an enemy pest to feed on the crop pest, by so doing you are eliminating the use of chemical pesticide?
Yes, we have discussed with two Universities some two years back in finding an alternative to chemical pesticides, and what we were looking at then is the biodegradable agro pesticides. This one is made from agro extracts, that is not harmful to man in the event of consumption of the commodity that has been preserved.
Now the use of bio control is not anything new, it has been on for the past 30, 40 years, some even used aphids, as part of agent of biological control and some uses other species of insects, but in doing that, there is a lot we need to understand. One is the introduction of a foreign body into an environment, one way or the other, it would affect the ecosystem. Aside from eating the pest, it may have effects on the environment.
Since the Service became an agency, your responsibility has expanded, how are you coping?
Well, it is said that to whom much is given, much is expected. Because government has entrusted that responsibility to us, we need to now expand our chest to be able to accomplish our mandates. There are many other areas that we have built into the mandate of NAQS, because of the exigencies of the time. So others are developing, we can’t say we will remain where we are. We have to move ahead from where we were to where we should be because of our new status, we need to recruit specialists staff in all the specialists field. You will be surprise that we are now talking about statistician, biologists with specialty in pest control. etc. That would help to support the anticipate areas we are expanding to. We need to bring in more that would help to support the anticipated areas that we are branching into. We need to bring in new surveillance technology, we can not be doing it manually like we are used to.
