Nafdac, Son and Police alone can’t control adulteration says Notore.

Notore.

An indigenous fertilizer company Notore has said that National Agency for Food Drug Administration Commission (NAFDAC), Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) and the Nigerian Police Force (NPF)  may not be able to  sufficiently curb the level of abnormalities in  fertilizer adulteration based on the fact that most of the products are sealed when being imported.

The Notore’s argument is coming on the heels of hasty checking by these agencies which many not have allowed a thoroughness that would checkmate influx of fertilization adulteration into the country that is currently ravaging agricultural productivity. 

Notore representative Mr. Ofili Akponor queries the import process of fertilizer saying it cannot adequately prevent adulteration since many of the products are not opened at the port of entry for proper checking of content, stressed both SON and police force cannot do anything about it after they must have been allowed into the county. 

According to Mr. Ofili “before you can import fertilizer into the country, you must supply to NAFDAC for quality check, and if they are satisfied they may allow your product to come. But the question is that has this process guaranty quality fertilizer into the country? This is because NAFDAC is not allowed to open the fertilizer content other than the only tested one. They always argue that if exposed to air, its quality will reduce, which might not be good for plant growth” 

 He pondered on how the role of NAFDAC, SON and police force can be complimentary to checkmating this challenge pointed that NAFDAC can only regulate through the ports but there are no proof of its identification numbers on these products saying “if for example fertilizer is smuggled into the country, the question is how do they track the fertilizer in the country? And on the other hand SON”s policy is about processing, they give you their substitution base on processing like Notore has one that signifies a mark of quality. SON is not a task force; the task force is NAFDAC as fraud is a criminal offense that is the police responsibility. You cannot just start going around arresting people just on hear say”

He stated that the farmer can realize that his product fake, when he uses it and doesn’t get result, but the question then is has he used it correctly and has he been using quality fertilizer, so it’s a big mismatch with the way things happen.

He added that his company has a channel of adulteration traceability through farmers “ Notore presently has some cases at hand and  arrests have been made as regards  fraud. Somebody bought WACOT fertilizer and repacked with our bags to sell.

 The good thing about Notore is that we can know what is happening all across Nigeria especially with our fertilizer through our marketing channels. We know our customers, we know our distributors, we know who they sell to, we know people who buy from our distributors and so we know how to track our customers. We have been able to track our products through the village promoter system that we operate. 

The village promoters are villagers and farmers in various communities that are trained by Notore to sell our 1 kg products with feedback.  For example a farmer uses a notore fertilizer and the yield he is expecting doesn’t come, he can explain to the village promoter who also complains to us through our field staff. Our field staff collects the sample and visit the farm to know how the farmer applied the fertilizer after which a sample is sent to our office and through that means we can tell where the farmer got the fertilizer. There are lots of cases as regards to this”