Biosafety: 45 groups caution Buhari against amended biotech act

President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to not sign into law the recently passed bill for an act to amend the National Biosafety Management Agency Act 2015. The bill seeks to enlarge the scope of the application, which includes definition of other evolving aspects of modern biotechnology in Nigeria. The call was contained in a […]

President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to not sign into law the recently passed bill for an act to amend the National Biosafety Management Agency Act 2015. The bill seeks to enlarge the scope of the application, which includes definition of other evolving aspects of modern biotechnology in Nigeria.

The call was contained in a statement signed by Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), the GMO-Free Nigeria Alliance and 43 other Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

The NGO coalition called on President Buhari to instead of assenting to the bill, put an outright ban on gene drives, on synthetic biology and on the first generation Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).

They said including these evolving aspects of biotechnology in the NBMA Act would open up the country to more dangerous experimentations on aspects of the highly controversial technology while “we still struggle with regulating the basic aspects of it.”

The groups said the evolving aspects of modern biotechnology referred to include gene drives/gene editing and synthetic biology known to pose serious risks to global biodiversity and will harm the economy, health, food and ecosystems.

The Director of HOMEF, Nnimmo Bassey, explained that gene drive was a genetic engineering tool which was used to force artificial genetic changes through entire populations of animals, insects and plants.

He warned that this technology had the potential to wipe out whole populations of organisms within a short time and could be harnessed as a biological weapon, thereby constituting a threat to national, regional and global security.

While noting that there was no agreement on how to carry out risk assessments, he said, “Until a global agreement is reached on these, it is our concern that any new framework enabling new gene-edited changes will also have the effect of creating loopholes allowing for the release gene drive organisms in Nigeria to disastrous results.”

The Coordinator of GMO-Free Nigeria Alliance, Gbadebo Rhode-Vivour, pointed out that synthetic biology, another aspect of modern biotechnology that the bill seeks to include, meant the generation of new organisms with traits which did not exist in nature through the use of re-designed principles of engineering molecular biology.

He added that synthetic biology might result to unexpected contaminants, toxins or allergens that would be hard to control.

The groups reiterated that Nigeria did not need agricultural biotechnology or the extreme applications of genetic engineering to solve food and agricultural problems.

“What is needed is the protection of our biodiversity as a robust base for supporting our local economy, indigenous farming systems and promotion of people-centred solutions and not profit-driven approaches,” they said.