The Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, has addressed the issue of Nigerian food product rejections in the United Kingdom.
She identified two key reasons for these rejections: non-compliance with advisory guidelines set by NAFDAC and the unwillingness of exporters to adhere to basic sanitary measures.
To rectify this situation, Adeyeye disclosed that NAFDAC had organized a scheduled side event with the UK Food Standard Agency (FSA) during the Nigeria-UK Enhanced Trade & Investment Partnership workshop held in London. This event was conducted under the UK-Developing Country Trading Scheme, and the Nigerian delegation was led by the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade, & Investment.
At a press briefing in Abuja, Adeyeye stated that she was represented by Dr. Abimbola Adegboye, the Director of Ports Inspection Directorate and Head of the Office of Trade and International Relations at NAFDAC.
Adeyeye revealed that NAFDAC had engaged with the FSA regarding the lack of notifications about product rejections and the absence of communication between the agencies. She also stressed the importance of mutual recognition of electronic certification between government agencies responsible for export certification.
The primary issues causing the rejection of Nigerian food exports, according to Adeyeye, include the absence of NAFDAC’s statutory testing for almost all exported food products, the failure to use NAFDAC’s free laboratory testing for export samples, and the involvement of unscrupulous agents in the export process. She also pointed out the exclusion of NAFDAC’s requirements in the mandatory pre-shipment inspection and the unwillingness of exporters to meet the sanitary and phytosanitary measures required by countries with stringent market access.
Other challenges included poor packaging, disregard for the importation requirements of trading partner countries, sourcing from open markets without safety or quality specifications, reluctance to invest in pre-export activities, and misinformation about NAFDAC’s role in pre-shipment inspection and container stuffing verification.
To tackle these issues, NAFDAC is implementing six regulatory measures. Adeyeye emphasized the importance of ensuring that no NAFDAC-regulated product is exported without passing through the agency and obtaining certification of safety and quality, including compliance with the destination country’s government requirements. This, she stated, would help prevent the economic losses resulting from the rejection of non-compliant exports by trading partners.
NAFDAC had previously reported that over 70% of food exports from Nigeria were rejected abroad, highlighting the urgent need to address export trade facilitation for regulated products leaving the country.
