Stakeholders at SeedConnect Africa have developed ways to deal with the numerous issues limiting the expansion of Nigeria’s seed system.
The Nigerian Agricultural Seed Council (NASC) hosts SeedConnect Africa, an annual program where participants from the seed industry from all over the world come together to discuss issues affecting the seed industry.
The Director General of NASC, Dr. Philip Ojo, stated at this year’s SeedConnect that the significance of SeedConnect Africa cannot be overstated because it brings together key players in the global seed industry to talk and deliberate on issues and themes of mutual interest to the seed system.
Ojo claimed that over the years, SeedConnect Africa paved the path for Nigeria to enact the Plant Variety Protection (PVP Act 2021) Law.
He claims that this adventure officially began in 2018—shortly after the inaugural SeedConnect Africa.
“I am pleased to report that Nigeria has a PVP Act and that we are working to complete Nigeria’s membership in the International Union for the Protection of New Plant Variety.
We have started the process of establishing the PVP office, and we presently have a draft rule that has been examined and approved by experts, according to Dr. Ojo. “We are currently doing a lot to operationalize this law,” he stated.
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He claimed that the NASC Seed Act revision, which strengthened penalties and laid a firm platform for the deployment of technologies to regulate the seed sector, was the second goal reached by SeedConnect.
“We need to sanitize the Nigerian seed sector,” he said. “With our work with the Nigerian Securities and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), we have been able to ramp up seed market surveillance and enforcement of standards.”
Quality control, capacity of seed businesses, extension services, and funding for research institutes, according to Mainza Mugoya, program coordinator for The African Seed Access Index (TASAI), continue to be the major difficulties facing the seed system.]
The seed system has a number of difficulties, and these difficulties differ from country to country. In Nigeria, one of the challenges is still maintaining quality control. Research, manufacturing of basic seed, processing of the seed, and marketing are all processes where quality can be compromised and where care must be taken to guarantee that it is maintained from the very beginning.
“The capability of the seed corporations is the second difficulty. The government has set quality control standards that seed firms must be able to adhere to.
“That is, the latter must adhere to the production standard, the inspection standard, the processing standard, the labeling standard, and the marketing standard.
When a company is created, it may take some time for it to develop the capacity to satisfy such criteria.
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“The extension services present the third difficulty. The extension services’ capacity in Nigeria is still somewhat underdeveloped.
The financing and technical assistance provided to research organizations that create seed varieties that are commercialized for farmers is the fourth challenge.
“These organizations frequently don’t have the money to carry out breeding activities or to sustain the types they have generated,” he said.
The Agricultural Development Program’s (ADP) inadequate budget, according to Professor Lateef Sanni, Head of Building Sustainable Seed System for Cassava (BASIC II), has undermined the extension consulting services for seed.
The right use of seeds will increase agricultural output, according to Professor Sanni, who is also a professor of food science and technology, and this will be accomplished through investment in advising services for extension.
If you consider what the World Bank accomplished by establishing state Agricultural Development Programs (ADP). They were the most effective means of actually bringing some of these innovations and best practices to farmers on a rural scale.
But regrettably, we keep cutting back on ADP funding. For example, we have roughly 1000 seed growers, but in order to reach them, we need to work with some commercial NGOs and ADPs.
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Since it is one thing to plant high yielding disease resistant seed and quite another to utilize solid agronomic methods or six stages in weed management, the combination of public and commercial extension advising help is crucial to reaching millions of farmers.
Therefore, he said, “Investment in extension consulting services is a major primary aspect to boosting our agricultural productivity as a nation.”
He also urged the government of Nigeria to invest in agricultural universities so that they can create a seed technical hub, which he claimed would accelerate the growth of the nation’s seed system.
Another issue is that no funding is being provided for universities to establish what I like to refer to as Seed Technical Hubs at least six institutions in each region to cover all of the country’s agroecological zones.
“This kind of action does not include most universities. There is a need to support seed development centers, particularly in universities of agriculture and universities that have strong faculties of agriculture in Nigeria, Professor Sanni continued. This is an area I want to urge the federal government to look into.
