The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Aliyu Bisalla, has said laboratories are essential for agricultural exports.
Bisalla made the remark while assessing the volume of work done in the newly constructed Standards Organisations of Nigeria’s laboratory.
According to him, the laboratory is fundamental to the Federal Government’s programme of diversifying the country’s exports from oil.
The Acting Director-General, SON, Dr. Paul Angya, said although Nigerians mostly engage in agricultural practice and solid mineral extraction, the country had been unable to export these natural resources successfully because it lacked relevant quality infrastructure to test them to the level acceptable to the purchasing countries.
He said, “Yams from my village as well as mangoes and tomatoes are eaten a lot in America and Europe but they are labelled Brazilian or Ghana yams because laboratories don’t exist in Nigeria to test and certify them for export.
“For the yam to sell in London, there has to be a certificate from a laboratory saying that the yam has been produced in soil that does not contain substances that will be harmful to the European consumers.
“Because we don’t have the laboratories right now, people who are smart take our yams to Ghana, Brazil, test them and label them Brazilian yam and sell them in Europe. They buy them here for 50 kobo a piece and sell them abroad for five dollars.”
He added “When this lab comes on stream, we will be able to test those products and they will be shipped from here to London and America as Nigerian yams and the five dollars will come here instead of the half payment that we are getting currently.”
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