The National Agricultural Seeds Council has disclosed that 40 per cent of companies that applied for the ₦50 billion Presidential Catalytic Fund for Seed Companies are fake.
The Director General of NASC, Hon. Fatuhu Mohammed, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja during the final briefing of the National Executive Steering Committee of the IMAGE Project.
He described the applicants as briefcase companies without real structure or capacity to produce seeds.
He assured that NASC will carry out strict screening to ensure only genuine seed companies benefit from the presidential intervention fund.
He explained that the ₦50 billion Catalytic Presidential Fund is a dedicated soft loan financing for seed companies, which is aimed at reviving seed production among Nigeria’s 634 registered seed companies.
According to him, the intervention fund stems from President Bola Tinubu’s manifesto commitment to ensuring Nigerians “plant the right seed to feed the nation.”
He said that the facility is domiciled with the Bank of Industry, which is serving as the financial gateway for disbursement.
“The money is not meant for BOI. The money is meant for Seed Council. But Seed Council is a regulatory agency, it’s not a financial institution.
“So the government needs a gateway, which is the Bank of Industry, to domicile the funds there for access,” he stated.
Sequel to the announcement, he revealed that all 634 registered seed companies applied.
He said the Council is using the application process to “fish out those that are not productive, the briefcase seed companies,” estimated at about 40% of applicants.
In order to ensure sustainability and repayment, he said the Council has set up specific guidelines and criteria for access.
He emphasised that the criteria are designed to ensure broad but responsible access to the limited ₦50 billion pool.
The fund is expected to address years of redundancy in the seed sector, boost production of quality seeds, and ultimately support food security and farmer productivity nationwide.
Commenting on the IMAGE Project in Nigeria, he said, the Project has delivered “a more robust and evidence-based approach to measuring crop variety adoption through the integration of DNA fingerprinting and household survey methodologies.”
Mohammed noted that through IMAGE, Nigeria has “generated valuable data and insights that will support policy formulation, investment decisions, varietal development, seed system strengthening, and agricultural transformation.”
To sustain these gains, he said NASC had established the Varietal Monitoring Unit (VMU) within the Council and developed data governance and sharing mechanisms.
“These efforts reflect our commitment to institutionalising varietal monitoring as a core national function rather than a project-based activity,” he stated.
Mark Nelson, Executive Director of Resourced, welcomed the diagnostic report on improved seed varieties presented under the National Agricultural Seed Council, describing it as a critical tool for understanding adoption challenges and guiding future interventions.
He commended the report for “capturing the outcomes, the problems of improved varieties on the landscape and what are the holdbacks that are causing those improved varieties not to be adopted.”
He said his organisation has partnered with the NASC for “almost six years now on the work to identify the varieties that farmers are preparing by using genotyping technology.”
Mr. Nelson noted that Nigeria now has “the national capacity to be able to perform varietal monitoring through genotyping surveys directly.”
Outlining the way forward, he said: “For NASC to continue to work with its stakeholders throughout the country and also international partners to broaden and deepen the experience to other crops and also to monitor these crops that are most important to the country on a reccurring basis so that additional insights on the turnover of improved varieties can better be reported.”
The approach, he said, will provide better data to support seed policy, improve farmer access to quality varieties, and strengthen Nigeria’s agricultural productivity.
Project Lead of IMAGE Nigeria, Dr Folarin Okelola, said the report, presented, used DNA fingerprinting to track adoption of improved crop varieties across Nigeria, moving beyond traditional perception-based surveys.
Speaking on the methodology, Okelola: “The normal way of tracking adoption is through perception studies where you just ask farmers… But over the years we’ve seen that perception of farmers most times is not correct.”
He likened the new approach to DNA paternity testing: “That is the same thing we are doing with plants and crop varieties now, going to the nitty gritty, using DNA fingerprinting of the variety to track adoption.”
Under IMAGE, he explained that NASC built a “genetic reference library” of all registered and released varieties, then matched it against samples taken directly from farmers’ fields.
Disclosing the key findings of the Report, he said, “Cassava recorded the highest adoption rate at over 50%; Rice, maize and cowpea recorded adoption rates between 0.1% and 10% and maize dominated by Open Pollinated Varieties(OPVs).
“Of the 42% maize adoption, most varieties in farmers’ hands are Open Pollinated Varieties. Many OPVs are “closely related” and cannot be genetically distinguished with the current pipeline,” he said.
He warned that over-reporting has real consequences: “It means the farmer may be growing a local variety and is loading it with fertilizer, expecting that material to give the yield, but he won’t get it.”
He said the Report also highlighted “a lot of noise” in the seed system, including adulteration and mix-ups, meaning “farmers are not actually having what is released by the breeder in their hands.”
To address this, NASC announced a post-IMAGE “value chain assessment study” and quality control audit.”
The study, he said, will trace 10 popular maize and rice varieties from breeder to agro-dealer to miller to identify where gaps occur.
