Nigerians must reject GMO policy –Prof Njemanze

Policy a foreign invasion Food not natural but intellectual property A medical scientist based in Owerri, who is also chairman of Global Prolife Alliance, Prof Philip Njemanze, has said that the Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) food policy in Nigeria is like a foreign invasion.  He is alleging that some rich foreigners and company owners were […]

• Policy a foreign invasion
• Food not natural but intellectual property

A medical scientist based in Owerri, who is also chairman of Global Prolife Alliance, Prof Philip Njemanze, has said that the Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) food policy in Nigeria is like a foreign invasion.
 He is alleging that some rich foreigners and company owners were behind the policy in the country.
 Njemanze, who is the proprietor of Chidicon Medical Centre in Owerri, also observed that some people were determined to mortgage the food security of the country by handing it to a few who would determine when a Nigerian would eat or remain hungry.
 He said far-reaching step had to be taken by both the government and all other stakeholders to stop the trend or Nigerians would run the risk of depending on foreigners to get food to eat.
Describing the GMO technology as an intervention into a modified gene of a crop in order to yield some characteristics, he said the practice was the greatest atrocity in the country.
 Prof Njemanze said what the people did in their fraudulent research was to change the characteristics by switching off the genes that allowed one to replicate the plant, adding that once they did that, it became an intellectual property and make the crop an unnatural thing.
 Justifying his position using tomato as an example, he said it was achieved when the characteristics of a tomato which had tuta absoluta invasion was taken and then made resistant to the disease.
According to him, by so doing, the owner would want to control everybody that wanted to plant that variant of the GMO tomato seeds thereby making huge amount of money out of the people, organization or government agency.
 He said based on his findings, the firms that carry out such research worldwide included Monsanto, an American multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology company, among others.
 He said what was happening in the country now in the modified gene food policy thrust would never be allowed in many countries and called on the society to resist it.
 He said: “A situation where the entire conglomerate has taken our natural crops such as yam, cassava, rice, banana, millet among others and made them to become GMO food is unfortunate,” adding that the situation would make the over 180 million Nigerians to depend on the western investors, who would solely have the power to release food for Nigerians to eat and deny them same when it suited them.
 Prof Njemanze, who alleged that the research was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the product pushed into the country by Monsanto, appealed to Nigerians not to allow the controversial genetically engineered food products arrangement take root in the country.
He said what Nigerians need is to use biotechnology to develop indigenous technology towards crop and animal disease prevention among others but not switching off the gene.
 The medical scientist called on Nigerians, no matter their status in society, not to support the GMO policy.