The 2019 National Fertilizer Quality Control Act has created emerging opportunities for the stakeholders to reposition the fertiliser sector.
Through the effective implementation of the law, experts believe that sanity will be restored to the one time industry marred by some sorts of fraud and adulterated fertilizer and agrochemicals.
For instance, the law empowers the Farm Input Support Services department of the Federal Ministry Agriculture and Rural Development, to within 30 days, issue license or certificate to qualified applicants, who want to participate in the fertiliser industry and where such certificates are not to be issued, the reasons must be made clear why such applicants cannot get the certificate.
In the law, manufacturing blending, importing or distributing of unbranded or misbranded fertiliser is a serious offense; dealing in adulterated fertiliser, offering for sale fertiliser that is underweight, selling condemned fertiliser or diverting or converting fertilizer, or flaunting a ‘stop-sale’ order. All of these carry a minimum of five years imprisonment without an option of fine.
Similarly, the use of destructive ingredients or harmful properties in fertilisers, conversion or diversion of fertilizer, sale of unbranded or misbranded fertiliser and obstruction of authorised officers for inspection constitutes a serious violation of the law.
Through this new law, farmers are also empowered to claim damages from violators and in the case were they suffers losses, he/ she can approach any of the aforementioned courts as the law authorizes the courts to award compensation to protect such farmers who have suffered from the violation of the law.
However, for smooth implementation, there is a need to harmonise fertiliser standardisation methods in Nigeria to allow uniformity in formulas and product testing.
Additionally, there is need for fertiliser regulation necessary to obtain samples of fertiliser from different points in the distribution chain and to determine the chemical composition and some physical properties of these products.
According to a Professor of Soil Science at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Amapu Ishaku, all service laboratories involved in fertiliser production and monitoring regardless of size, should be designed in a manner to facilitate operational efficiency, minimise contamination, and produce reliable and repeatable results.
This, according to him, will help in minimising errors due to contamination, reagent quality, environmental differences, operator errors, and instrument calibration are common occurrences.
Equally important is the need to intensify efforts already in place by the Farm Inputs Surport Services (FISS) department of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to step up initiative aimed to harmonise standardisation of methods for fertiliser and agrochemicals production in Nigeria.
The move should 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 recently 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 results 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.”
