The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has lamented that over 70 per cent of food exported from Nigeria are rejected abroad, with huge financial losses to the exporters and the country.
In a statement on Sunday, NAFDAC’s spokesperson, Olusayo Akintola, quoted the agency’s director-general, Mojisola Adeyeye, as saying that the deplorable state of export trade facilitation for regulated products leaving the country has continued to be a serious cause for concern.
She sought collaborations with the Nigeria Customs Services (NCS), State Security Service (SSS) and others to promote Nigerian goods abroad.
Speaking at the official commissioning of NAFDAC’s new office complex for the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, Ms Adeyeye said the collaboration would reduce frequent rejection of Nigerian food exported to Europe and the United States of America.
Ms Adeyeye said a trip to NAFDAC export warehouses within the international airport would explain unequivocally the major reason for the continuous rejection of Nigerian exports abroad.
The DG stated that the agency was responding to this great challenge, hence initiating a collaborative adventure with the government agencies at the ports towards ensuring that goods are of the requisite quality.
She said that the collaboration would ensure that the goods from Nigeria meet the regulatory requirements of the importing countries and destinations before such are even packaged and hauled to the ports for shipment.
Ms Adeyeye said this would also save the country’s reputation in international commerce while calling on stakeholders to consider this a call to duty and collaborate with NAFDAC.
The NAFDAC boss said that without the police, NAFDAC could not do much in investigation and enforcement, adding that the agency has over 80 police officers working with it.
The DG said that the agency had embarked on optimising and customising its processes, stating that the Ports Inspection Data-Capture and Risk Management System (PIDCARMS) had been deployed to the ports and land borders.
She said they were deployed to automatically capture and process data for imported regulated products from the Nigeria Customs Information System (NICIS).
Ms Adeyeye stated that the agency had extended the frontiers of the fight against substandard products by procuring more Truscan devices to check for quality of products at the ports, shops, market spaces and anywhere else.
(NAN)
