By Tina Amanda
A coalition of stakeholders, including Nigerian farmers, researchers, civil society organizations, faith-based organizations, academia, women, and youth, has called for an outright ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the preservation of Nigeria’s indigenous seeds and food system.
This demand was articulated in a communique issued at the conclusion of the Multi-Stakeholder National Conference on GMOs and Biosafety in Nigeria. The event, organized by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in collaboration with GMO-Free Nigeria Alliance in Abuja, was themed “Beyond the Propaganda: Unveiling the Truth About GMOs.”
The stakeholders called for an urgent review of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) to address existing loopholes. These include the conflictive composition of the NBMA Board, the absence of provisions on strict liability, insufficient attention to the precautionary principle, discretionary provisions on risk assessment, and the power to receive gifts.
They also demanded that the NBMA produce, for peer review, the results of risk assessments conducted before the approval and commercial release of GMOs in Nigeria.
Additionally, the stakeholders urged the government to increase support for smallholder farmers, who are the backbone of the country’s food production. Recommendations included reviving extension services across all local governments, increasing infrastructure to reduce post-harvest losses, addressing insecurity to allow farmers to return to their farms, ensuring better access to credit and land, and properly remediating oil-polluted soils in the Niger Delta and other mining-impacted communities.
The communique further called on the House of Representatives Committees on Agriculture and Services, Health, and Environment to ensure independent and long-term research on GMOs and biosafety, as announced in May 2024.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security was urged to invest in and promote the adoption of an agroecological system of farming. This system is proven to increase food productivity, diversify farmers’ income, recover degraded soils, increase biological and nutritional diversity, mitigate climate change and its impacts, and ensure food sovereignty for Nigeria.
Moreover, the Ministry was also called upon to promote the establishment of markets for organic and agroecological food products in Nigeria.
The stakeholders criticized GMO Introduction, noting that food insecurity problems persist. They described the initiative as driven by greed and profit, arguing that it has not effectively addressed the underlying issues of food scarcity.
“In almost 30 years since the introduction of GMOs, they haven’t solved the problem of hunger in countries where they have been deployed or in the world. There is no evidence of a country that has eradicated food insecurity using GMOs.
“GMOs are mostly driven by greed and profit maximization rather than
the need to address hunger or food insecurity. Currently, this technology is dominated by a small number of corporations. (Four companies control 60 percent of the global seed supply: Bayer (merged with Monsanto), Corteva, ChemChina, and Limagrain.
“These companies engage in the development and patenting of genetically modified (GM) seeds,
also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs)).
“There is significant linkage of consumption of GMOs with several
health and environmental implications including cancers, mental health
disorders, immune disorders as well as loss of nutritional and biological diversity.
“The Crops have been linked to soil degradation through the destruction of soil microbiota leading to reduced GMOs can be used as biological weapons due to the ability to alter the genetic material of species and to drive extinction.
“Industrial agriculture has led to the treatment of food as a mere
commodity and corporate control of seeds – production and sales, food
packaging, agricultural machinery, and agrochemicals in the world today.
” The question of the safety of GMOs in Nigeria is left unanswered. So far,
there is no evidence of independent, long-term risk assessment conducted
by the National Biosafety Management Agency which is saddled with this
responsibility.
“There is a need to critically consider the underlying causes of food insecurity in Nigeria – bad governance, insecurity, climate change, poor extension service, lack of storage/processing infrastructure, soil degradation, poverty, inequalities, etc. which directly affect
agricultural productivity. GMOs are not the solution to these.
“The idea of labeling to ensure the right to choose is in our law but it has not been implemented due to our peculiar socio-economic context. The promoters of GMOs including the regulator -NBMA have not bothered to label foods sold in open markets in bowls and by the roadside”.
