Zacharys Anger Gundu, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mkar, has said the National Biosafety Management Agency cannot regulate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) because it lacks the technical and scientific capacity to do so.
He maintained that, as such, the doubts against GMOs by stakeholders are credible.
Gundu stated while fielding questions following his presentation at the National Conference on “Beyond Propaganda: Understanding the Truth about GMOs,” organised by HOMEF in collaboration with the GMO-Free Nigeria Alliance.
Presenting his final arguments, Gundu said doubts against GMOs are credible; GMO science is driven by greed and profit, adding that Nigerian and African food security must be predicated on the “small farmer” using local plant and animal species.
The Don noted that while food can be taken for granted as nourishment and life-sustaining, it is also key to: diseases, population, inequalities, parasitic livelihoods, conflicts/wars, and instability. further stating that while GMO science is driven by greed and profit, it must be queried if GMO was food/science, a weapon, safe, or environmentally friendly, among others.
The VC in his recommendations called on stakeholders to engage more intimately with local farmers, policymakers, and politicians because they are at the level of policy-making and regulation, as he noted that Nigeria cannot regulate GMOs.
Read also: Group opposes GMOs as solution to Nigeria’s food crisis
In his welcome remarks, Nnimmo Bassey, the Director, HOMEF, noted that the industrialization of agriculture has led to the treatment of food as a commodity and the control of seed production and sales; ‘this has, in turn, led to massive land grabbing in parts of Africa for the cultivation of monocultures, often to meet industrial needs.”
He said, “Genetic engineering technologies have further aided the concentration of power in the agricultural sector by allowing the companies to design suites of seeds and accompanying chemicals. Whereas plantations were powered by slavery and colonialism, agricultural neocolonialism is more subtle and persists in the coloniality of power, with the new leaders given to the notion of cash cropping instead of growing food to meet local needs. The distortion introduced by monocultures for cash rather than for food offers easy ways to subvert a people’s food sovereignty and inexorably births food insecurity.
Nnimmo noted that while food sovereignty promotes food security through the preservation of biodiversity, indigenous varieties have inherent high nutritional values. Hybridization and monocultures have dramatically eroded crop varieties.
He added that the question of the safety of GMOs in Nigeria is left unanswered, yet several varieties (over 20) of these products have been approved for various uses, including for commercial release to farmers. So far, there is no evidence of independent, long-term risk assessment conducted by the National Biosafety Management Agency, which was saddled with this responsibility.
He urged that in a situation where safety is in doubt, the precautionary principle of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, to which Nigeria is a party, advises governments to hold the breaks.
“We must critically consider the underlying causes of food insecurity in Nigeria. Will GMOs solve bad governance, insecurity, climate change, poor extension service, lack of storage/processing infrastructure, soil degradation, poverty, inequalities, etc. that directly affect agricultural productivity? The obvious answer is no. We will not achieve food security and food sovereignty unless these critical issues are addressed.
He added that the idea of labelling to ensure the right to choose is in our law but has not been implemented due to our socio-economic context, adding that labelling GMOs will not avert the genetic contamination that GMOs can cause due to pollination with conventional varieties and the resultant loss of our indigenous seed varieties.
The process of approval of GMOs needs to be interrogated for compliance with the provisions of the NBMA Act. For instance, Section 24(5) provides that the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) shall certify and determine whether GMOs are safe for human consumption. This is not complied with, as NAFDAC recently stated they are not in support of GMOs and that enough risk assessment hasn’t been conducted.
GMOs are touted as a silver bullet to end hunger. However, hunger continues in the world despite the introduction of GMOs 28 years ago. Other mythical claims include that GMOs give higher yields than natural varieties. He recalled that when the commercial placement of Bt cotton was approved on 1 May 2016, the hype was there would be bumper harvests that would lead to the reopening of textile mills across the country. Eight years down the road, there has been not a whimper about cotton bolls piling up on the farms of northern Nigeria. He further stressed that the collapse of the textile industry in Nigeria was not primarily caused by a lack of cotton but by political forces engineered by neoliberal international financial institutions as well as the ravages of bad governance.
“We denounce the false narratives of GMO promoters who claim that any GMOs approved by government agencies are safe. We remind everyone that there is both good and bad science. There is equally inappropriate or unacceptable science. In these days of tough economic circumstances, it is time for us to act and not just moan or agonise. It is time to set up gardens and farms wherever we find suitable spaces. It is time to bring back our indigenous food varieties. It is time to decolonise our taste buds and kick out GMOs.
