In recognition of the Council’s contribution to agriculture in Nigeria, NASC won an award at the Agricultural Value Chain (AVC) Award Night organized by The Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) on May 23, 2019, held at Statement Hotel, Abuja.
The award won was under the category Champion of Smallholder Agriculture – Research Institution. The award was received by two (2) staff of the Council on behalf of the Director General.
President Muhammadu Buhari has re-appointed the Director-General of the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), Dr. Phillip Olusegun Ojo, as a result of the successes of the seed sector in Nigeria under his watch. According to a letter signed by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, the re-appointment takes effect from Sunday, May 26, 2019. Dr. Ojo whose areas of special expertise include Seed Certification and Quality Control, Seed Production, Seed Testing, Seed Conditioning, Seed Storage and Capacity Building, has deployed his wealth of experience in transforming the Council into an innovative agency that has recorded tremendous growth and progress. Under his leadership, Nigeria through the Council is benefiting from the regional harmonised seed regulation within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as the country is so far the only one capable of moving seeds to other countries as a result of its advanced seed system, leading to numerous job and wealth creation opportunities along the seed value chain.
Also important is the significant increase in value of investment in the seed industry with Nigeria becoming the hub of seed production in Africa where presences of nationally owned large scale seed production companies that compete well with multinational giants are recorded. Dr. Ojo had said at different forums that there are huge challenges to tackle in the seed industry, including adulteration, smuggling and selling of grains as seeds, leading to poor harvests and low returns on crop cultivation investments. Sales of poor and adulterated seeds to farmers by unscrupulous merchants who defraud farmers and give companies a bad name are at their barest minimum as the Council’s seed inspectorate mechanism are working tireless with stakeholders to arrest fake seed producers and sellers.
He said with the appointment, his team would work with breeders, seed companies, input dealers and farmers to ensure international good practices in the sector, saying without a viable seed industry, food security and sustainability of farm operations would be a complete failure.
In a bid to further enhance the seed sector in Nigeria and West Africa, a letter of intent between NASC and mPedigree, the technology giant behind the success of Goldkeys platform globally, was signed. This will mean that in the next few months, NASC will just like in the pharmaceutical industry introduce a turnkey electronic seed certification system with scratch card authentication and enhance security features that will make it impossible for the faking of any seed certified by the NASC.
The Goldkeys technology, will enable quality and genuineness verification by farmers and the public through SMS, smartphone apps (with GS1 barcoding support) and web. It is also equipped with its own integrated call center desk software. Farmers and the public can use any of the aforementioned channels to confirm within a few seconds if a tag on any seed purchased by them was genuinely issued by NASC or not.
The technology will give NASC complete control over every certification tag and batch of seeds right from its production and movement throughout the entire seeds value chain. This innovation is supported by AGRA and USAID/Nigeria.