The National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control in collaboration with CropLife Nigeria, organising a certification training for agrochemical dealers on the safe and responsible handling of crop protection products.

In a statement signed by the President, CropLife Nigeria, Dr David Achimugu, stated that henceforth, all agrochemical dealers in Nigeria must be trained by CropLife Nigeria, listed, and certified by NAFDAC before they can handle, store, and distribute agrochemicals used for crop protection in Nigeria.

CropLife Nigeria is the national chapter of CropLife International; a non-for-profit association of plant science and biotechnologies, agrochemical manufacturing, marketing, and distribution industry that conducts stewardship training for stakeholders in the agricultural value chain to increase skill capacity for ethical handling and use of pesticides to achieve safe use, cost-effective productivity and environmental preservation.

The President, CropLife Nigeria, Achimugu, while giving his welcome address said, “This is the flag-off of the presentation of certificates to deserving agro-dealers, that have completed the CropLife-NAFDAC training and accreditation programme.

“The training and certification of agro-dealers programme is a testimony to the collaboration of work between a regulator, NAFDAC and a critical stakeholder, CropLife Nigeria, whose self-regulatory goal helps in the furtherance of the regulatory mandate of the regulator- NAFDAC. Suffice it to mention at this juncture, that our collaboration gave birth to the standing NAFDAC/CropLife Stewardship Committee.

“It is our hope that the management of NAFDAC will continue to give full support to this standing committee, not only to complete the training and accreditation in the remaining 5-Regions of Nigeria but also in the other collaborative engagements.”