Why we will eat and live

There are speculations that the deployment of agricultural biotechnology by the federal government is targeted at killing Nigerians. This does not portray common sense. This is a discussion that should be championed by scientists but unfortunately, as is always the case in Nigeria, artisans lead discussions that are way beyond their comprehension and competence. Genetically […]

There are speculations that the deployment of agricultural biotechnology by the federal government is targeted at killing Nigerians. This does not portray common sense. This is a discussion that should be championed by scientists but unfortunately, as is always the case in Nigeria, artisans lead discussions that are way beyond their comprehension and competence.

Genetically modified crops and products (GMOs) do not kill. They are the most regulated products in the world today and approvals and release are hinged on thorough safety assessments based on substantial equivalence. For the purpose of clarity, there is no approved genetically modified crop in the Nigerian market Nigeria. All GMOs in Nigeria are still at research level.

On the issue of GMOs, Nigeria is not operating in isolation as recently the parliament in Uganda passed their biosafety law because the country needs modern biotechnology to address peculiar problems associated with Banana which is their main staple food. South Africa has been practising modern biotechnology for close to a decade and America has practised it for over two decades. In all these years, there has not been any scientific research attributing any harm or emerging diseases to the technology. Nigeria, as of today, has only granted less than 10 permits for Confined Field Trials (CFTs) of GMOs and therefore these crops are not in the market, yet certain individuals constantly insinuate that the technology is killing Nigerians. 

This technology being discussed is Genetic Modification (GM). Since its emergence over twenty years ago, it has suffered what other technologies before it went through. Recall when the airplane was invented, it was speculated that it was the end to nowhere, people said you would enter and die but today it has made life comfortable as journeys of thousands of kilometres are undertaken within hours.

What is happening to genetic modification is similar to giving a dog a bad name so as to hang it. Today, the world has been made a better place especially for those suffering from terminal illnesses such as diabetes as a result of insulin produced through genetic modification. Rather than killing people, a lot of people are alive today as a result of insulin. Hence the decision of the World Health Organization (WHO) to introduce GM mosquitoes to eliminate Zika Virus and malaria incidents across the globe.

Unknown to the critics of the technology, Nigeria has approached the adoption of the technology differently. The country is applying the technology in areas where conventional endeavours have failed. For instance, the BT cowpea (beans) project was introduced when attempts to address the issue of Maruca infestation through conventional breeding failed. Fifteen thousand species of cowpeas across the world where screened and none had resistance to the Maruca pest. Cowpea (beans) is a major staple in Nigeria as the country is the highest producer and highest consumer in the world. Today, Nigeria is importing beans from Niger Republic and other neighbouring countries because our farmers can no longer meet up with the national need due to Maruca infestation and the critics see nothing wrong with that.

 Nigeria is conducting genetically modified rice trial research because as it stands today, Nigeria is the world’s largest importer of rice spending over one billion naira daily on rice importation. The genetically modified rice initiative known as Nitrogen Efficient, Water Efficient and Salt Tolerant (NEWEST) rice is principally to save Nigeria the unwarranted foreign exchange and to also protect the environment against over use of chemicals such as fertilizers.

Some of the critics of the technology have cited issues of a stressed environment and a fragile ecosystem. Rather than stress the environment, GM crops provide succour for the environment as the modification reduces the use fertilizers and other chemicals which deplete the ozone layer and make the ecosystem fragile.

The latest publication on GM crops shows that in 2016, the 21st year of commercialization of biotech crops, 185.1 million hectares of biotech crops were planted by 18 million farmers in 26 countries. From the initial planting of 1.7 million hectares in 1996 when the first biotech crop was commercialized, the 185.1 million hectares planted in 2016 indicates 110-fold increase. Thus, biotech crops are considered the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture.

In 2016, over one hundred Nobel laureates in a letter to the United Nations (UN) acknowledged that the GM technology poses no harm to human health nor threat to the environment. These laureates were also joined by the Nigeria Academy of Science (NAS) who came out with a position supporting the federal government’s deployment of the technology.

Over the years, critics of the technology have harped on the fact that the European Union (EU) does not support the use of GMOs but it may interest them to know that the EU has reversed its stand on GM in the face of emerging facts about the efficacy of genetic modification. It now allows member states freedom to treat issues of GM at its own sovereign level.

According to the European library of congress, GMOs and food or feed made from GMOs can be marketed in or imported into the EU, provided that they are authorized after passing strict evaluation and safety assessment requirements that are imposed on a case-by-case basis.        

Having laid to rest the usual argument about Europe banning GMOs, it is imperative to state here the procedure for approving research on genetic modification in Nigeria.

First, the law establishing the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), which is the competent authority for the regulation of GMOs in Nigeria, is an act of parliament with the objective to safeguard human health, biodiversity and the environment from any potential, adverse effect of GMOs including food safety and ensure that the use of GMOs does not have adverse socio-economic and cultural effects either at community or national level.

Secondly, at the receipt of any application for a GM research, a technical team made up of knowledgeable individuals is constituted to scrutinize the application before making their recommendation to the Agency. 

Therefore, to say that the NBMA should be called to order shows ignorance, as NBMA does not promote the technology but is a regulator and the Agency is solely funded by the federal government. 

Finally, the federal government of Nigeria has taken it upon itself to solve the food problems of the country by using locally available solutions. The fact remains that government has taken its own decision to deploy genetic modification in the agricultural sector, taking into consideration the high human resource available at the over twenty research institutions across the country and the Nigerian scientists who drive the procedure thereby making our own GM exploits a home-grown solution.

Dr Nnadi is a member of the Nigerian Biotechnology and Biosafety Consortium.