Authorities shut fertilizer plants over alleged adulteration ─Report

* KASCO’s 2 fertilizer blending plants collapsed due to lack of maintenance ─Source

* Company had equipment breakdown and we suspended production ─NSIA Chief

* No, KASCO wasn’t shut down for fertilizer adulteration ─Managing Director

Web Editor | ConsumerConnect

The Federal Government of Nigeria has shut the Kano State Fertilizer Company Limited, located in Kano, Kano State, over an allegation of product adulteration and manual mixing of the components of the NKP blend.

Informed source disclosed that the Federal Government, through the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), recently ordered the suspension of activities in the company.

The firm’s two fertilizer blending plants developed a fault and were abandoned by the management, reports The Punch.

It was further learnt that the lack of blending plants led to the workers’ mixing the raw materials manually with shovels.

A source also expressed fear that the manual mixing of the raw materials could endanger the lives of the workers.

He said, “KASCO owns two fertilizer blending plants, but they developed mechanical fault due to lack of maintenance.

“Labourers at the factory are now mixing the raw materials manually with shovels and filling bags on the factory floor.

“Hazardous chemicals are used to blend fertilizers and, if badly handled, can endanger the lives of people.

The source also disclosed that “when they are not in the right proportions, the chemicals can also destroy the soil and permanently compromise its ability to produce valuable crop yield.

“The company is also adulterating the NPK 20:10:10 blend of fertilizer and selling it to unsuspecting members of the public.”

Nonetheless, when The Punch contacted Bala Inuwa, Managing Director of KASCO, he refuted the claim that the company was shut due to fertilizer adulteration.

Report stated Inuwa noted that the company was shut due to lack of urea for the production of fertilizer.

Inuwa said: “It is not true that we are adulterating fertilizer; we have never done it and we will not do it now.

“What happened was that we had issues with a collateral manager called Umar, who complained that his employers did not pay him.

“When he complained that he was not paid, we asked him what we could do and he said we must be giving him money to be comfortable.

“We told him that we could not be giving him money anyhow, because we were doing what we were supposed to do.

“He later said we should reach a compromise, and we told him we would not do that.

According to Managing Director of KASCO, “during the Ramadan, we gave our staff members money to celebrate, and we extended the gesture to Umar.

“When he got the money, he thought we were settling him and he started making noise that the money we gave him was too small, and the next thing I knew was that he started circulating a video on the social media that KASCO was blending fertilizer manually.

“He was circulating a fake video, because we didn’t give him money. We suspended operations because the company supplying urea has shut down due to the COVID-19. KASCO was not shut down for fertilizer adulteration.”

On the development, Mr. Uche Orji, Managing Director of NSIA, clarified that operations at KASCO were temporarily suspended to test some batches of the product produced by the company.

Orji said: “We received a report and investigation is ongoing. KASCO had equipment breakdown and we suspended production to check some batches of the company’s products.”