Nigeria needs plant variety law for robust seeds sector

·       Expert says no enough companies

An economically efficient seeds industry in Nigeria may continue to be a mirage unless a Plant Variety Protection (PVP) law is put in place. This view was deduced during a three-day training held at National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), Sheda, Abuja.

Food Farm News gathered that non-promulgation of the law, required to provide protection against unauthorized varieties release or commercialization, would negatively affect Nigeria’s prospect of food security.

A source told our correspondent on condition of anonymity that many big foreign seeds companies operating in the country were afraid to fully establish in Nigeria because of non availability of plant varieties release right that gives protection to intellectual properties and facilitate appropriate royalty payment, adding that until this and issue of enough funding to NASC are realized, the seeds industry may not be able to  function optimally.

It was also gathered that for Nigeria to have an efficient seeds industry, government must be ready to adequately fund NASC and at the same time equip the sub sector with effective legal backings that would be used as tools to police the industry like the recently assented National Seeds Act by President Mohammadu Buhari and also Plant Breeders’ Right Bill presently at the committee level in the  National Assembly.

The technical adviser to the Director General (DG) of NASC who anchored the training, Mr. Folarin Okesola explained that all the fears being expressed by plant breeders and other varieties owners  would soon become a thing of the past as effort were already geared towards sorting out the plant varieties right at the National Assembly, adding that a  bill in that regards had passed the second reading at the House of Representatives and had now been  referred to a committee group for further deliberation towards becoming an act.

He said the essence of the three-day training was to sensitize and prepare the mind of plant breeders from the research Institutes, academia, seeds companies and farmers towards the crop varieties bill that would soon be passed into law.  

Meanwhile, an expert, Mr. Sadi Dansadua has attributed limited functioning seeds companies and inspection officials to lack of enough availability of improved seeds in the rural areas, querying why only 75 seed companies out of registered 300 were functional with barely 50 inspection officers monitoring the whole of the local governments  in the federation.  

 He continued: “documents obtained from The African Seed Access Index (TASAI) showed that 156 companies were active in 2017 but the number increased to 300 in 2019. And a good number of the companies produced rice and maize seeds.”

 He added that Nigeria has the highest number of seed industries in Africa, yet it has the lowest ratio of impact among the countries, but noted that it was probably because most of the seeds companies have small production capacity and that the high number of rice seed companies was partly due to the government initiative to support rice production in Nigeria.

Prof. Emmanuel Ikaru  from the Faculty of Agriculture, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), said the seed companies have grown but they still had a big role to play in the agricultural sector for food security adding that Nigerian government has failed to support them due to  policy summersault.