NIGERIAN ABOUT TO FACE BEANS SCARCITY

Nigeria’s quest to diversify its economy into agriculture has suffered a major setback as the European Union has extended the ban which it imposed on the imported Nigeria beans in June 2015 by another three years.

Recall that in 2015, there was news about killer beans in Nigeria spreading on the air waves. While some dismissed such news as rumors, others swore it was for real. The actual story was that a particular pesticide used in the cultivation of beans, harmful to health was detected in high quantities in beans. This led to panic and hence the name “Killer Beans”.

It is for this reason that the EU (European Union), which is the second largest importer of Nigerian beans after America, banned the importation of beans by its member countries. Test carried out on Nigerian Beans in 2015 showed that it contained between 0.03mg – 4.6mg per kilogram of this harmful pesticide called DICHLORVOS, which at that quantity might be injurious to health.

According to the EU, the maximum-harmless quantity of the pesticide in Beans should not exceed 0.01mg per kilogram, but Nigerian Beans was found to contain more than this quantity.

So in June 2015, the European Union banned the exportation of beans from Nigeria to any of its member countries. This was done in order to give Nigerian food regulatory agencies time to tackle the problem. But a year after the initial ban (in June, 2016), even though Nigerian authorities have reportedly sorted the pesticide issue, the European union does not seem to be satisfied with the progress and therefore has extended the ban for another 3 years to 2019.

This means that Nigeria cannot export Beans to the EU until 2019 except they are convinced otherwise. With this ban, Nigeria may lose about $10 billion of export revenue which it was supposed to get from beans.

Further problems may arise, as experts believe that this might cause commercial farmers to move away from the production of Beans to other lucrative agricultural products which they can export for foreign exchange. If this be the case, then a scarcity of beans is looming in the country.

 Already the Minister of agriculture had noted that the activities of the Boko Haram sect have reduced the Beans productivity in the North eastern part of the country where most of the beans we eat come from.

First it was Rice, then Tomatoes, now Beans too… God help this country