By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA). Uche Orji has said that Nigeria and Russia relationship has continued to wax stronger despite the latter’s ongoig war against Ukraine.
He also revealed that Nigeria has been importing potash, a raw material for blending of fertilizer from Russia and Canada under the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI) introduced by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Orji who spoke on Thursday at the 39th Session of the State House Briefing held at State House Press Gallery, Presidential Villa, Abuja, said a government to government decision was earlier reached between President Buhari and Russian President Vladimir Putin when he visited Russia and Morocco to discuss how fertilizers will be blended in Nigeria and farmers get them at a reasonable prices.
He said the raw materials are brought from Russia and Morocco as well as Canada where potash is being sourced since the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine.
Asked if importing goods or raw materials from Russia will not put Nigeria in the bad books of Europe and United States of America (USA), he said:
“Thank you for the questions. Let me start from the very last one actually. It’s a very interesting one. When the Russia crisis started with Ukraine, it was very explicit that fertilizer and oil/gas were not quite part of the ban. They were excluded from ban.
“We speak about it but everyday Europe still buys oil and gas from Russia.
Fertilizer was not included but the challenge then was most of the banks were still afraid to open Letters of Credit. It took us awhile to solve that problem, get all the clarifications and then solve it. So I can assure you that that decision was taken with the full understanding of the implications and with also full clarity with everybody involved that food production and fertilizer are very important for us here as a country.
“But we also needed to diversify which is why we also reached out to other places we hadn’t done business before. Canada is quite far relative to Russia but it became a scramble everywhere in the world just like what happened during the Covid-19 when people were buying out people’s masks. So we were all scrambling and it was like wherever you will get food to feed your people, get it first and we can fight later. So that was really the attitude.
“I needed to clear that fertilizer was explicitly excluded from the ban in terms of doing business with Russia. So there is no issue there.
“Let me now deal with the issue of how much is coming from Canada and how much is coming from Russia. We have a total of 105,000 metric tons coming, of which 35,000 metric tons are coming from Russia and the rest from Canada.
“But now that we have re-established the Russian link for potash supply of potash, subsequent supplies will be from Russia just because it saves us time. Its one week shorter in terms of sailing time in terms of vessels versus Canada. It is not even coming from central Canada, it’s from far North of Canada. So it’s too far compared to Russia”.
