According to Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Director General of the World Trade Organization, Nigeria’s exports of cowpeas and sesame seeds are rejected on the international market due to noncompliance with international Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, or SPS, regulations.
This was revealed in Abuja during the recent launch of seven trade support programs started by the WTO-ITC in association with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, or NEPC, by Okonjo-Iweala, the former minister of finance for Nigeria.
According to her, health and safety examinations of Nigeria’s exports of sesame and cowpeas revealed that, between 2019 and 2021, pesticide residue levels were almost twice as high as permitted.
She asserts that if action is not taken to address the health concerns, Nigeria and Sesame could lose their positions as the world’s top producers and consumers of cowpeas.
The world’s largest producer and consumer of cowpeas is Nigeria. Nigeria is the world’s fourth-largest producer of sesame, with exports to the EU, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries. Sesame is mainly an export crop.
“However, due to non-compliance with international SPS requirements, Nigerian cowpea and sesame exports have increasingly faced rejections in several destination markets.”
“More than one-third of Japan’s imports of sesame come from Nigeria, but in the last few years, health and safety inspections have discovered cases where pesticide residue levels were almost twice as high as the maximum residue limits allowed between 2019 and 2021,” the statement said.