The EU Export Ban: Can SON bail Nigeria out?

For some time now, the Nigerian dried beans have been prevented from enter­ing into the European market for failing to meet the European food safety require­ments. This suspension, it is learnt, has been on since June this year and will remain in force until June 30, 2016, when it may be removed provided Nigeria is able to provide sufficient guarantees of compliance to the European food safety regulations.

Dried beans is not the only Nigerian prod­uct that is under ban in Europe but also such products as dried meat, smoked fish, peanut chips, palm oil, melon seeds and ses­ame seeds. And unconfirmed reports said that many other Nigerian commodities may follow if proactive measures were not taken by the government to mitigate the situation by addressing the issues that necessitated the suspensions.

Recently, the head of the European Union (EU) Delegation to Nigeria, Mr. Filip Amato, was quoted in the media as saying that the suspension of the importation of dried beans from Nigeria was as a result of over 50 rejections of the commodity in the Eu­ropean market. According to Amato, the rejection was traced to the overdose of “un­authorized pesticide, dichlovos,” used in the preservation and processing of the dried beans in Nigeria.

These bans raise serious concerns over the direction of the nation’s economy when viewed against the backdrop of the down­ward trend in the oil price in the internation­al market. Since last year, the price of oil, the mainstay of the nation’s economy, has con­tinued to plummet. This thus re-enforces the calls by the organized private sector (OPS) for the urgent need to diversify the nation’s economy. The OPS specifically, called for the re-invigoration of the agriculture sector, which used to be the cash cow of the nation’s economy before oil took the front seat.

In fairness to the government, proactive measures have been taken to upgrade the non-oil sector especially the agriculture. The immediate past administration did quite re­markably a lot in this regard and which the present regime of President Muhammadu Buhari has acknowledged and promised to improve on.

However, the real issue now is how to make the Nigerian agricultural products acceptable in the international market. It is against this backdrop that the recent concerns raised by the media, the National Assembly and lately the Federal Executive, which recently inau­gurated an inter-agency committee charged with achieving zero rejection of Nigeria food products, can be appreciated. The Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) is a member of the committee.

Given its mandate, it is the responsibil­ity of SON to save the country from these frequent embarrassments by the nation’s in­ternational trade partners. SON should drive the policy of Made-in-Nigeria for the World (MINFOW) by ensuring that all the products leaving the shores of this country meet the required international standards. Anything short of this will be unacceptable.

As stated in the foregone paragraphs, the EU is not in a hurry to remove the ban on the dried beans even in 2016 unless it sees suffi­cient guarantees on the issues raised regard­ing the European food safety regulations and the commitment to consistently follow the regulations. It is, therefore, the duty of the SON to ensure that the Nigerian dried beans and other Nigerian banned products, re-enter the European market and other parts of the world.

Also, according to media reports, the EU ban of the Nigerian products is largely on account of the nation’s long-standing quality infrastructure deficit. According to analysts, it is also for this reason that Nigeria could not maximize the window provided AGOA provided by the United States Government to give Africa the opportunity to access the American market.

What this means is that Nigeria must up­grade her quality infrastructure, whose com­ponents I gathered, include standards, testing labs, metrology, certification, accreditation and legislation. For instance, it takes metrol­ogy to develop standards and testing/mea­surement devices. It takes testing to discover overdose of a chemical. It takes standards to know the pesticide that is authorized and un­authorized. It takes certification and accredi­tation to separate the reliable laboratories and professionals from the- not –so- reliable. It also takes legislation to establish the administra­tion that harmonizes the disparate technical regulatory bodies in the standardization sys­tem. SON must as a matter of urgency ensure that all these are in place.

SON Director General, Dr. Joseph Odumo­du, was recently reported as saying that the agency is doing something to address all these issues. In fact, he stressed the need for Nation­al Quality Infrastructure (NQI), adding that this would put a halt to disgraceful threats such as the EU ban of the Nigerian products.
According to him, this involved bringing up dilapidated laboratories to world class so that they can be accredited and then having an accredited lab for each product in which Nigeria has comparative advantage or strate­gic interest. That means having at least 19 ac­credited laboratories in the near future. Only accredited labs are internationally trusted for valid test reports (scientific proofs of quality).

According to Odumodu, SON Food Tech­nology Labs have won accreditation for both biological testing and chemical testing while 10 others are already undergoing accredita­tion tests. Thus, what this translates to is that products certified in Nigeria within its com­petences are acceptable without further test­ing anywhere in the world.
Odumodu also said that quality being a matter of measurement of accuracy; metrol­ogy is witnessing a massive build-up.

The metrology upgrade started with the upgrade of the metrology unit to a well-equipped department with two mobile units for calibration at distant sites and with staff that have been trained in some of the world’s renowned national metrology institutes. He must act fast.