Following focus of the Buhari led on the agricultural sector, the Commodity Brokers Association OF Nigeria (CBAN), has urged the National Assembly to pass a bill to enhance professionalism in commodity trading in the country.

This was stated by the Vice President, CBAN, Sani Mustapha, in a chat with journalists, in Abuja, during a five-day combined intermediate and advance training programme for its members.

Mustapha emphasized the importance to have registered commodity brokers and the benefits to patronise the commodity exchange by industrial end-users and farmers.

“A bill has been sent to the National Assembly for an Act to come out to register us as a certified association where registered and trained commodity brokers will be given a licence.

“This licence will certify a trained person as a broker to go the floor of the commodity exchange like the Abuja Commodity Exchange and trade for commodity.

“Now for you to train in that commodity is to have been trained for future market, knowledge on commodity, how commodities are traded, and different classes are given grade so that an industry, farmers can approach the commodity broker.

“For example farmers who have cooperative and have large volume of agriculture commodity approaches a professional broker in commodity trading in turn finds a buyer of their produce,” Mustapha said.

He further stated that such training would have given the broker advice for more industrial end-users and also suppliers on the farm produce and also the price.

“The benefits from this to Nigerians is this kind of training will all be recorded; banks, financial houses, Ministries of Agric, Trade and Investment will be interested such that Nigeria will follow like Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa, China, and America, where all commodity trading is done electronically,” he added.

The 500 membership association established in 2009 has been involved in several commodity exchange media sensitisation, which Mustapha said executive committee of the association has been leveraging on the media to tell the public about activities and also the benefits commodity trade and professional association such as theirs could give them, and including the duty of a commodity exchange.

“Whereby all end-users of commodity will access, and the government can also know about our activities and leverage on what we are doing. For example the easier for a standardised platform and just like the stock exchange, where you have to go to a registered stock broker if you want to buy share.

“The commodity exchange will help to know at what price you want to buy and also predict using the platform such as ours. We have been into media advocacy to sensitise Nigerians on the activities of the association and also we go on inspection when invited by the Nigeria”, he stated.