By; JACOB ONJEWU DICKSON
Following the signing to law of the Fertilizer Quality Control Act, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture has started moves to ensure implementation and sanitise the agric sector.
In collaboration with the Fertilizer Producers and Suppliers Association of Nigeria (FEPSAN), the ministry took a tour of fertilizer plants and markets in Kano State, where four outfits were sealed.
Addressing newsmen in Kano on Thursday at the close of the tour, the fertilizer quality control officer of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Oke Sunday explained that there is a new law called the Fertilizer Quality Control Act which a lot of those dealing in the business of fertilizer are not conversant with.
He stated that there are a lot of specified by the law whose violation is punishable that include lack of registration, sale of government procured raw materials in the open market as well as adulteration of the product.
According to him “This is a market operation and I always tell people that we are not interested in arresting people just indiscriminately. Our interest is to try as much as possible to get the operators to comply with the provision of this Act so that they can go about doing their normal business in the fertilizer sector.
“Fertilizer we know is a critical input in the farm production. So we don’t want to course destruction in the market that can affect the supply of fertilizer to farmers.
“So that why in this particular exercise there are a few particular things we are looking for. First of all we discovered that there are individuals that have grossly violated some of the provisions of the law and we got approval from the honorable Minister of Agriculture to seal up those plants.
“That is why we identified those shops and sealed them in a bid to preserving the evidences found in those shops.
“The main essence of this is to make sure that we come back later and tell them what they are not supposed to be doing. So in the course of sealing the shops we availed them on the violations they allegedly committed and tell them not to touch the said fertilizer until we come in again.
“Then this second day of the exercise we looked out for the cases of diversion of government procured raw materials. There is a provision of the Act that says the diversion of fertilizer is actually a punishable offence.
“That’s why when we went to the market we saw cases of government procured Presidential Fertilizer Initiative, PFI, raw materials being sold in the open market.
“It is not supposed to be sold. It meant for the local blending of NPK fertilizers by the local blending plants in the country. They are not supposed to be sold in the open market.
“That is just the alleged act being found in the local market. But surprisingly, the dealers are not the ones we are actually targeting the fertilizer blending companies that are in possession of these raw materials and decided to sell them.
“But for now we have not made mention of any of those companies because we don’t know how those raw materials are found in the open market. It could be that they stole them or we don’t know actually, but further investigations will reveal some of these issues. For now I not permitted to make any statement on that. The most important thing is that we found those items in the market and we documented them.
“So far we have sealed four outfits pending the investigation” he stated.
