The plans to take total control of Nigeria’s food system is moving rapidly on the genetically engineered organisms (GMO) highway, and it is dangerous, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, as well as other groups have warned.
According to a statement by its Biosafety Project Officer, Joyce Okeoghene, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, said the list of GMOs being pushed in Nigeria includes beans, maize and cotton.
The group explained that recently the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) teamed up with ETHZ laboratories of Zurich Switzerland to apply to carry out confined field trial in Nigeria of cassava genetically modified to “obtain storage roots with lower post-harvest physiological degradation after harvest (thanks to pruning) without any loss of the nutritious starch.”
However, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, along with 87 other civil society organisations representing over 5 million Nigerians, sent an objection to the application submitted to the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA).
The action of the organisations was to forestall the danger the action might bring.
According to HOMEF, IITA’s application is to conduct “confined” field trials of the cassava genetically modified using a new gene silencing technology that has never been tested before.
It said IITA admitted that such an approval had not been given for the GMO cassava anywhere in any “jurisdiction” in the world.
Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), said, “The IITA has been a respected institution in Nigeria and Africa on whom farmers depend for good quality and safe crops.
“Now they have decided to drive on the GMO road, Nigerian and African agriculture face a mortal danger.
“If NBMA approves this application, we can as well say good bye to food safety in Nigeria.”
Bassey added, “even if the IITA presents the Frankenstein cassava as a crop for the production of biofuel and not food, there is no way to stop our farmers from planting the GMO cassava for food. We call on the NBMA to do the needful and reject this application outright. We don’t need GMO cassava. We don’t need GMOs.”
Reacting to the multi-front attack of GMO promoters in Africa, AFSA, the pan-African civil society platform championing food sovereignty in Africa, “calls for an immediate ban on the importation into South Africa of Monsanto’s high-risk second-generation gene-silencing genetically modified (GM) maize destined for human consumption.”
According to the statement, “AFSA rejects and condemns US corporation Monsanto’s plan to exploit millions of Africans as unwitting human guinea pigs for their latest genetic engineering experiment.
“AFSA also condemns the IITA field trial application in Nigeria using the same risky technology to produce GM cassava for the agro-fuels industry.”
“These GM applications target staple foods of maize and cassava, eaten by many millions of Africans every day. Scientists have reported that the untested gene-silencing effect is able to cross over into mammals and humans, and affect their genetic makeup with unknown potential negative consequences, and have called for long-term animal testing and stronger regulation before this goes ahead,” the group added.
IITA has a long romance with cassava.
In 2006, the institution issued a statement stating that from their research, for the Nigerian Government to achieve 10 per cent ethanol for fuel the country would need to produce about 7 billion kilograms of cassava annually.
According to Mariann Bassey Orovwuje, the chairperson of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, “Promoting GM crops for biofuels demonstrates the hypocrisy of the biotech giants, who are always quick to summit that GM crops are necessary to produce more food for the growing world population.
“They make the case that relying only on natural crop varieties would create food deficits and lead to forests being cleared for cultivation, to meet rising food demand. Yet, the same companies think nothing of diverting large areas of arable land for cultivation of crops to develop ethanol for fuel, to feed the voracious machines of the North.”
HOMEF and all the organisations objecting to the application for confined trials of the novel cassava GMO agree with AFSA and demand that the National Biosafety Management Agency should throw out the application and advise them to carry out the test in Switzerland where it was developed.
“If IITA is tired of serving the needs of Nigeria and Africans as they have done in the past, they may as well take their business elsewhere.
“How can we ever trust them any longer with this extremely dangerous path they are taking?” asks Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, Convener of Nigerians against GMOs.
