By John Oba
Abuja
The federal government has stated its is plans to establish first West Africa’s Centre of Excellence for Seed Industry, CoESI, to boost research and production of various seeds for farmers.
This is even as it unveils cassava tracker instrument to be able to trace cassava seed through the whole value chain.
The Director-General, National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), Dr. Philip Ojo, stated this yesterday during the visit of officers from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, IITA, Dr. Lavar Kumar and Dr. Hemant Nitturkar, at NASC technical headquarters and proposed CoESI.
Ojo explained that the centre will be of immense benefit to the seed industry to grow the agricultural sector, which the investment in the project will be conservatively about N400 million as a start, and will be in phases. Adding that the council has been in talks with some development partners to provide funds for the project.
He said: “We propose the establishment of NASC-CoESI – Nigeria, a strategic centre for seed industry development and seed business incubation, to enable both public and private individuals and smallholder seed companies to bootstrap themselves to help solve this humanitarian crisis of food insecurity.
“In doing so, they will acquire the financial means to educate their children, have access to quality healthcare, and purchase technology to enter the global digital society. The Seed Centre of Excellence will enhance our current industry manpower gap and conduct diploma, and certificate programs in Seed Science and Technology.
“We are resolved to build a strong centre which will be the hub of seed regulation in West Africa because there is no CoESI, and this is going to be number one. We are resilient and focused to put in place a world standard centre, which will readily make available seeds to farmers.
“NASC-CoESI will offer short courses for public and private sector experts in seed certification, seed testing, seed quality control, seed storage and handling, seed business management and provide practical field hands on training on seed field establishment and management plus demonstrations’ and promotional activities.
