The Federal Government through its National Agricultural Seeds Council has commenced moves to make Nigeria a full member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in order to boost the country’s export of seeds.
It disclosed this at the workshop on International OECD Seed certification on Wednesday in Abuja, where the global cooperation trained Nigerian officials as part of the requirements to become a certified OECD member nation.
In his address at the workshop, the Director-General, NASC, Dr Philip Ojo, said Nigeria’s seeds would be sold globally with ease once the country attained the status of an OECD membership, noting that this would halt all forms of seeds’ dumping in Nigeria.
He said, “The OECD scheme is an international organisation in the seed trade that we are joining. We have observer status now and we are trying to become a full-scale member so that our products will be able to key into that international seed trade.
“With what is going to happen now, our seeds are going to be sold anywhere, and also, our seed companies will be able to sell their seeds and increase income and economic prosperity for our country.”
Ojo stated the professionals from OECD would assess Nigeria’s facilities after the workshop and expressed optimism that the country would scale through.
“After the training, the international experts will look at our facilities, and with that, we will pass all that it takes. We are all out to ensure we key into all those schemes around the world so that we can be at par with our colleagues all over the world,” the NASC boss stated.
He added, “This is the first step in the training. We are the regulators. After this, there will be a series of training, and we are going to cascade this training to other levels.”
