From Okwe Obi, Abuja
An international organisation, the Development Gateway, has unveiled what it called ‘Fertilizer Dashboard’ under the Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA), to monitor the country’s price, consumption, availability and export volume of input.
Its Nigeria Project Manager, Beverley Hatcher-Mbu, who spoke to newsmen yesterday in Abuja, clarified that the initiative is being sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“The dashboard gathers key data on Nigeria’s, fertilizer sector on price, and consumption and product availability and makes it easy to use easy to access, and free to the public. So, anybody; private sector, public sector, can use it.
“We worked closely with the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) that has an office here in Nigeria.
“So, they both collect their own data, including retail price and they also work closely in what we call the fertilizer technical working group to ensure that all key actors agree on the key data points that show up on the dashboard.
“When key outcome is that if everybody starts from the same point with their data then they can make the same kinds of decisions.
“So, it is not that public sector and private sector use different data and are trying to figure out what the best part is forward.
“Now, it is clear that Nigeria has moved from being an imported to an exporter. So how does that change the decisions that companies make? How does that change the decisions that the public sector makes, we want everybody to have the best, most trustworthy data available to make decisions together? So that’s really for us, the key output of this dashboard,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Ernest Umakhihe, hailed the scheme, adding that data gathered would help government boost the fertilizer industry.
He said: “This has to a greater extent helped the domestication of the blending of NPK Fertilizer in Nigeria. Furthermore, the National Fertilizer Quality (Control) (NFQC) Act, 2019, and the regulations were signed to further strengthen the Industry.
“The implementation of the Fertilizer Act and the regulations have commenced with the registration of the fertilizer operators.
“In addition, we have started developing a system that would capture production, sales, carryover stocks, price collection, lab assessments, upgrades, among others.”
In addition, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, said the country has become one of the largest producers of nitrogen fertilizer, maintaining that without the farm input, the soil will not be fertile for crops to grow.
Represented by the Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Bima Enagi, he said: “The Private Sector in Nigeria is awakening in this space.
“In regards to urea, Nigeria has become a global leader in the production of nitrogen fertilizer thanks to expanded investments.”
Professor Victor Chude, who is the Registrar/CEO of the Nigeria Institute of Soil Science, stressed that, “the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in partnership with the AfricaFertilizer.org, the International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC), and the African Fertilizer and Agro Business Partnership are jointly working on this 4-year program to holistically address the supply-demand and use of fertilizer data in Nigeria and regions across Africa.
“During the period of the initiation of these programs, the partners have collaborated with the private sector, government agencies, research institutions and other development partners to address the Key data and data supply gaps to fill in supporting strategic decision making in the Nigerian fertilizer sector.”