By Henry Umoru
THE Director-General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON, Dr. John Ndanusa Akanya said Monday that if Nigeria must achieve its set target of becoming one of the top twenty global economies  by the year 2020, there was the need to revive standard in the Nigeria Agricultural commodities for export.

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Akanya who lamented the nation’s over dependence on oil which has affected agriculture in Nigeria, disclosed that SON was set to penetrate the world markets with the country’s Agricultural commodities by establishing Nigeria Global Good Agricultural Practice , (GAP) standards for the certification of Nigerian produce for exports.

Speaking  at the first Workshop on Global Good Agricultural Practice in Nigeria  organised by SON in collaboration with Best Produce International(UK) and GlobalGAP(EUREPGAP), the Director General of SON, Dr.  Akanya noted that the setting up of GAP would help promote global acceptability of Nigeria’s agricultural commodities  exports at the international markets in the US and EU countries.

According to him, “the Global Standards is an international reference system across the Globe and can easily be applied by all parties for primary food and agricultural sector. Also, it equips members with reliable tool kit which allows each partner in the supply chain to position themselves in a global market with respect to consumer requirements.

“It has been achieved by many African countries such as Kenya, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Senegal, Egypt just to mention a few. For instance, Ghana has achieved individual global GAP certification for its produce and it is already working towards the National standards.

There is no reason for Nigeria, the so called “Giant of Africa” not to be part of this Global system of certification.“The Standards Organisation of Nigeria is taking this bold step to champion the course.

as the Apex organization for standardization due to the immense benefits that will accrue from the exercise. The Global Gap standards when put in place and implemented will lead to production of agricultural produce with competitive advantage in terms of markets, economies of scale and profitability. It will provide appropriate benchmarks and compliance criteria for certification in the country.

“It will ensure product integrity as unique identities will be provided to the producers with record of all relevant products and certification information for veritable market advantage including labeling.

“Global GAP operates as a database of all certified producers worldwide making market participants profit from instant validation of their data whether as sellers to proof their GLOBALGAP compliance or as buyers to comply with their sourcing policy”.

The SON boss who noted that with the establishment of Nigeria GAP will address the issues of barriers and challenges that are currently facing the export of the country’s agricultural produce to UK, US and other EU countries, stressed that with this, farmers, processors and exporters will have the privileges that were being enjoyed by their counterparts in other West African countries.