Nigeria Must Pass Food Safety Bill For National Survival – NESG

The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has said Nigeria will remain at high risk of food burn infectious diseases if the food and safety bill before the national assembly is not passed into law.

NESG’s chief operating officer and senior fellow economic policy, strategy and competitiveness at the NESG Dr Tayo Aduloju made the remarks yesterday at the Nigerian food and feed safety transformation dialogue in Abuja

The bill looks at food and feed operators down to the consumer. The bill basically aims to ensure food safety and good quality for consumption. It will create an overarching framework that allows all government ministries and agencies concerned to work in harmony to ensure that there is no gap in the control point, thereby, not also clogging the space with regulatory activities.

Like in most African countries, there has been an increase in food-burn diseases in the last decade such as Ebola, swine and laser fever through bush meat-burn sources.

“Phytosanitary conditions and barriers which appear mostly in food must be overcome to access those markets. We are dealing with malnutrition issues not just from low quantity of food but quality of food. Here’s an opportunity to deal with some of that.

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“We can no longer behave as if it’s not important. Because of how critical it is, we must be in a hurry to pass the bill because it’s a question of national survival. How abattoir is run affects you.”

chicken is cut in the market affects you and how rice and other food stuffs are displayed in the market affect you. This is about whatever happens in the open market,” he stated.

Aduloju said the implication of not having a tighter and more proactive food safety and animal feed safety standards implies that “we are simply digging our national graves from a life expectancy point of view.” He said Nigeria urgently needs a tighter, more predictable and inbuilt regulations. Life expectancy in Nigeria is put at a little above 50 years, which experts say speak to the fact that the nation is missing the opportunity to save its citizenry.

According to 2017 disease burden analysis for Nigeria, diseases like diarrhea, malaria and lower respiratory diseases are some of the top communicable diseases causing premature deaths in Nigeria, a situation Aduloju said requires a response.

He also argued that not passing the bill into law would mean constant high cost of doing business in Nigeria due to multiple regulations, which small and medium scale enterprises have been complaining about. With the passage of the bill into law, the cost of business operation is expected to reduce by streaming lines of control.

Corroborating him, team lead, NEASSBER operations, Mrs Nsikan Essien said it would help Nigeria to maximally benefit from the now operational African Continental Free Trade Area agreement with the potential of $2.5 trillion worth of food and agriculture commodity trade with the rest of Africa.

The secretary to the government of the federation, Mr Boss Mustapha who was represented by the special adviser to the government of the federation, Ms Habiba Lawal said the transformations dialogue will provide the platform to address the challenges faced in food and feed safety and translated into local languages and urge all stakeholders to collaborate and protect Nigerians from associated health and economic concerns.

In his welcome address, the director and national coordinator, food safety and quality programme at the Federal Ministry of Health, Mr John Atanda stated that the national food safety management committee developed the national food safety and quality bill which is expected to eschew collaboration and ensure wholesomeness of food consumed all over the country.