Green genecide not ‘’Green Revolution’’

President Muhammadu Buhari’s pledge that his administration is ‘’ready to assist as many as want to go into agricultural ventures’’ has come at a time when nineteen African countries have signed agreements with multinational companies with monopolies over seeds developed by their scientists. The companies are demanding that local farmers be prohibited by government officials […]

President Muhammadu Buhari’s pledge that his administration is ‘’ready to assist as many as want to go into agricultural ventures’’ has come at a time when nineteen African countries have signed agreements with multinational companies with monopolies over seeds developed by their scientists. The companies are demanding that local farmers be prohibited by government officials from planting seeds inherited from their ancestors; and those modified by local plant scientists.
Unlike traditional seeds, these corporations market seeds which are genetically programmed NOT to give high yields when saved and sowed by farmers in the next farming season. Farmers are, thereby, compelled to buy new seeds.  This ensures profits; plant genetical monopoly, and dictatorship by seed sellers.
Norman Borlaug, the plant geneticist who anchored the much celebrated ‘’green revolution’’, developed seeds of cereals which gave farmers higher yields for the same area of land cultivated. Companies who benefited from his scientific genius also acquired seeds that required support by fertilizers; herbicides, pesticides and constant supply of water guaranteed by irrigation.  Companies marketing these seeds would, thereby, also manufacture fertilizers, herbicides and other inputs. Borlaug’s scientific genius gave farmers who can afford his ‘’genetically modified seeds’’ higher yields for harvests; while giving owners of seeds tributaries for profits.
As peasant farmers in Tanzania told Aljazeera, the seeds they traditionally plant have, over the centuries, adapted to soil conditions, erratic rainfall, and local pests; while seeds saved from their annual harvest guarantee same yields. Orders by their government to stop planting local seeds and turn to alien seeds lacks funds to purchase, is a promise of famine and food-based genocide.
It is most alarming that 19 African governments have signed these agreements, almost certainly, without consultation with their peoples. In Tanzania, this behaviour recalls a disastrous decision by the British colonial government to plant groundnuts on vast areas of land without consulting the genius of local farming population. Local farmers were accused of illiteracy and possession of ‘’primitive’’ brains. It was only when the venture became a massive failure that some officials admitted to hearing mocking whispers by local communities.
Kofi Annan and his allies among multinationals that make huge profits out of agriculture, are selling this programme under the rubric of repeating in Africa the redemption from famine that Borlaug’s ‘’green revolution’’ took to India in the 1960s. Mother Teresa, however, exposed to the world face-to-face contact with false claims of famine having been ended among India’s rural and urban hundreds of millions.
This marketing of what should more accurately be called ‘’GREEN CROP- GENECIDE’’ and ‘FAMINEVOLUTION’, is surging across Africa concurrently with companies from Brazil grabbing land in Namibia and Ghana; those from Japan sharing over 70 million hectares in Mozambique; those from South Korea buying 3 million hectares of land for growing maize in Madagascar; and those from Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia grabbing land in Sudan and Ethiopia, etc. In Uganda and Tanzania, elected parliamentarians have provoked protests by local farmers for aiding foreign companies to grab land in their areas. 
Africa escaped the genocide against indigenous populations which was official practices across South America from Peru in the west to Brazil and Argentina in the east. In North America, Australian and New Zealand that genocide became fused with notions of ‘’statehood’’ as European immigrants were supported in their wars against the so-called ‘’Red Indians’’ or “Aborigines’’.
 Bitter wars were fought against French settlers in Algeria; German settlers in Namibia; British and Boer land-grabbers in Kenya and Zimbabwe. The hideous system of ‘’apartheid’’ in South Africa compelled protracted wars waged by the African National Congress from bases in Swaziland, Zambia, Tanzania, Angola and Cuba.
While Africa’s liberation wars incited demands for Black Power and democratic governance by the Civil Rights Movement; Women’s Rights and Gay Rights in the United States and Brazil; and ethno-national liberation struggles inside the former Soviet Union, its successes in Africa remain fragile. In Zimbabwe, NATO countries are relentlessly fighting President Mugabe’s drive to give black Zimbabweans economic ascendancy. In South Africa invisible former intelligence and other security operatives seek to derail the drive for economic democracy for the black majority. A foreign-instigated coup drowned Somali’s socialism in clan blood-letting.
Accordingly, a drive for ‘’seed serfdom’’ by multinational companies – over Africa’s rural majority and large scale farmers – is ruthless and most cynical.  Nigeria should join the African Union Commission to stop governments from preventing their farmers from using traditional breeds and seeds: including those genetically improved by local scientists. Buhari’s pledge would benefit Nigeria’s patriotic plant and livestock geneticists labouring in local research institutes. Their past and future inventions must be patented. Nigeria’s diplomatic initiatives in Africa should vigorously roll back stomach colonialism by MNC.