Okwe Obi, Abuja

The Federal Government has, again, warned those who import seeds without its approval, false labelling, use of unbranded packaging materials and marketing of seeds should desist from doing such insidious act or be ready face to wrath of the law. 

The Director General, National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), Olusegun Ojo, who addressed newsmen at the weekend, in Abuja, insisted that passage of the seed law would make it cumbersome for anybody to flout the directives of the Council and get away with it.

He said: “The story is no longer the same henceforth, anybody who contravenes the provision of seed laws as a first offender will be sentenced to jail for a period of one year or pay a fine of N1 million or both subject to the decision of a court of competent jurisdiction.

“A repeated offender will be liable  to imprisonment for two years or pay a fine of N2 million or both, after which licenses of the unrepentant offender will be withdrawn or such offender are placed on suspension from operating as a seed enterprise.

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“NASC  wishes to sound a note of warning to anyone or agency who have form the habit of engaging in any form of seed business recourse to the seed act to desist from such acts henceforth.

“We are equally appealing to all our sister agencies of government at the federal, states and local level, development partners and farmers associations engaging in any form of seed related activity to henceforth conduct their engagement in strict compliance to the provisions of the seed act as the Council will not hesitate to impose the Seed Act; to checkmate any of their actions or activities, which are in contradiction to the law.”

Ojo further disclosed the Council’s deployment of smart, tamper-proof and enhanced security certification tags which will replace old seed tags, to give farmers access to best seeds across the country; supported by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

He added: “NASC certification tags will now have a scratch-able portion with special serialised electronic codes, which farmers will be able, through SMS, to send to a dedicated NASC number; where we will receive immediate information on the genuineness of the seed purchased.”