Statistics show that Nigeria is the largest producer of many Agro-products, yet it loses $1bn annually to non certification of agric produce for export.
How can the country reduce these losses and improve on its aviacargo exports?.
Stakeholders are of the opinion that urgent steps must be taken in enforcing standards.
According to the world ranking of Nigeria Agricultural commodities, Nigeria is number one in yam, shear butter, cassava, melon seed, kola nut, cocoyam and sorghum and in Africa, the largest producer of cowpeas, 5th in plantain and 3rd in carrot, among others.
Despite being number one in many aspects like, economy by GDP, population and agricultural produce, Nigeria is 5th on the African AviaCargo Export Chart after Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and Ethiopia.
Unfortunately, 80% of containers arriving in Nigeria return empty and out of every 10 containers that come into Nigeria laden with imports, one or three leave the country with goods.
The Federal Government is making frantic efforts to grow exports as it plans to grow cashew export from $252 million to $500 million for 2023.
With the little volume of agricultural produce Nigeria exports are oftentimes rejected.
Coordinator, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN Aviacargo Roadmap Committee, Mr. Ikechi Uko gives reasons for this.
“You can’t smoke fish with charcoal and wood, you don’t eat pomo because it is roasted with tyre, who is enforcing it? Nigeria now as a matter of fact domesticate most of this global standards, it would reduce the volume of the rejection of our goods by other country”.
According to Mr. Uko, the aim of setting up the committee by the former Managing Director of FAAN, Captain Rabiu Yadudu, is to identify challenges to aviacargo exports and proffer solutions.
Some of the solutions identified by the committee which comprises all stakeholders in the aviacargo export ecosystem is highlighted by Mr. Uko.
“Target improvement in agricultural practices, invest in solving the huge logistic problems in Agricultural produces, enhance certification of farms and operator in the value chain, insist on traceability of all exportable produce, tackle the mayhem at the export cargo terminals, upgrade packaging of all exports, incentivize the production of high value export crops and mitigate identified procedural and regulatory obstacles”.
While stressing that Nigeria has the potential to generate billions of dollars through the export of its produce sought after globally and create more jobs, the Managing Director, Nigerian Aviation Handling Company, NAHCo, Mr. Indrani Gupta harped on two strategies to be adopted.
“We need to select few products and focus on them and we need to work in synergy with the federal government to create certification infrastructure required to facilitate the export of those. We need to look at how we can access and how we can put money on the pocket of the growers”.
Apart from non-certification, another area Nigeria exports are rejected is poor packaging.
Mr. Basi Agbaorumi, Managing Director, Skyway Aviation Handling Company, SAHCO believes Nigerian exporters can surmount the challenge with the help of government agencies enforcing standards and the private sector ensuring compliance.
“We have to have a standards that says, if you don’t attain this standards of packaging, no goods come to the airport”.
It is hoped that if the solutions and suggestions put forth are executed, Nigeria’s aviacargo export of 204,649 tonnes according to Airport Council International in 2021, will quadruple.