The Farm Inputs Support Services (FISS) department of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has step up initiative aimed to harmonise standardisation of methods for fertiliser and agrochemicals production in Nigeria.
The move is part of strategies designed by the department to ensure smooth implementation of the 2019 National Fertilizer Quality Control Act.
At a stakeholders’ workshop on the Evolving Trends in Analytical Equipment, Methods and Standards for Fertilizer and Agrochemicals held yesterday in Abuja, the deputy director, FISS, Ishaku Ardo Buba told journalists that the Act stipulates stringent punishment for the violators and wouldn’t be a business as usual for those engage in the business of adulteration as he argued farmers to report violators.
He said, “We are here as part of the process to harmonise the system they are using, the methodology because once we put stop sale order, we carry the minimum of two or three labs, they will do independently and give us a result, so if there’s a conflicting result will go to the national reference lab, which will be able to give us the final result.
So what we have done now is to bring together all the laboratories in Nigeria and the research institutes, come let’s harmonise our method, let’s use the same methodology, the same reagent on whatever that comes out at the end, we’ll be able to say yes, if two or three labs give us a result, at least we’ll be able to say out of the two, maybe they are similar or what are other factors that may affect the quality of the result”.
“Once you get everybody documented and they are operating on the platform, their behaviour can be checked on the platform, the technology has come and we are going to be able to check the behaviour of the various value chain players along the input or fertiliser chain”, he added.
