Is Nigeria ready for genetically modified foods?

Greg Odogwu (gregodogwu@yahoo.com )

The ongoing moves by the Federal Government to introduce Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs as they are popularly called, into the Nigerian society have been a subject of heated hullabaloo. A GMO is a biological constitution which has received genetic material from another, resulting in a permanent change in one or more of its characteristics; it is used in food production to improve yield, nutrients or strengthen resistance to diseases and pests. Various interests ranging from environmentalists to armchair conspiracy theorists have raised concerns that giving Nigerians 

Genetically Modified Foods to consume is tantamount to shoving poison pills down their throats while destroying their environment. On the other hand, the government is saying that it will usher in a new era in the deployment of biotechnology to boost food production, ensure food security and reduce the high incidence of food importation.

Biotechnology, the practical use of biological processes in industrial production, is no more an arcane term, neither is it a new science. Although it has been described as having its official origin in a 1980 United States of America’s Supreme Court decision that “a live human-made microorganism is a patentable matter”, experts and historians alike are of the opinion that biotechnology has actually been around for a very long time now, because its early examples include the making of cheese, wine and beer, while later developments in science and technology widened its scope to include vaccine and insulin production; and also its latest globally controversial product: genetically modified organisms, sometimes also called transgenic organisms. It is this last manifestation of biotechnology that gave it its contemporary definition, and thus, because of the attendant hype and sensationalism, shot it to the global footing of a multilateral agenda.

In 2010, I wrote an article titled, “Has Nigeria missed the biotechnology revolution?”, where I advocated the effective utilisation of our abundant bioresources and also the use of agricultural biotechnology to boost Nigeria’s food production in order to ensure food security. But today, having read the Federal Government’s, or to be fair, some ministers’ body language, as regards deployment of GMOs in Nigeria’s food production, I must sound a note of warning to our government as a caveat or proviso to my submissions in the said article. When President Goodluck Jonathan signs the Biosafety Bill – which is now on his desk – into law, it will set the ball rolling in the implementation of genetic engineering in our shores. In a recent interview, Prof. Bamidele Solomon, the Director-General of the National Biotechnology Development Agency, said that not only will the new law introduce a future of food security, but that it will ensure the safe use of modern biotechnology while protecting human health, the environment and national biodiversity – all through the effective regulation of genetic manipulation practices here. But to the layman, this also means the opening of our borders to the official importation of genetically modified foods from the Western multinationals eagerly waiting by the sides to raid the promising Nigerian consuming jungle.

Now, juxtapose this to the fact that our Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, gleefully announced in another forum a couple of months back that “Syngenta, Monsanto Company and Dupont Company have indicated interest in investing in Nigeria. In fact, in June 2013, Syngenta plans to set up an office in the country.” This announcement might sound delicious to an ordinary investment-hungry Nigerian, but to me, it is a source of intense worry. Syngenta and Monsanto, for example, are two extremely wealthy chemical multinationals, very notorious in the West as holders of most agricultural GMO patents. The implication of this is that when Nigeria officially starts to consume GMOs, our own local producers of biotech products, such as the NABDA and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, will be edged out of business. 

As a matter of fact, the conspiracy theories surrounding GMOs mostly revolve around these multinationals, which are perceived as heartless Frankenstein food formulators on a furious campaign to saturate the globe with their chemical patents.

Nigeria has genetically enhanced cassava, cowpea, sorghum and beans in the laboratory presently, waiting for the Biosafety Law to enter mainstream agricultural production, and for replication of materials for wider application, but we do not have indigenous businesses engaged in GMOs production. So, as a country, we cannot compete. As far as biotechnology is concerned, what we had was a sprinkling of plant tissue culture laboratories here and there, which mushroomed at the dawn of the so-called biotechnology revolution, and quietly fizzled out because of sundry reasons. To the end that simple, cheap and unsophisticated scientific methods of plant breeding and disease prevention are supposed to be introduced in agriculture in order to improve annual yields, supply better stocks for planting and make available large quantities of seedlings for farmers, tissue culture projects sprouted up whereby much needed seedlings and cassava stems were biotechnologically manufactured and made available to the suffering farmers of Nigeria but which died a natural death because such labs could not function without constant power supply.

Furthermore, in 2002, the Cross River State Government commenced an ambitious programme to produce feedstock on a large scale for its juice processing plant within the Calabar Free Trade Zone, through biotechnology. It planned to multiply 30 million pineapple suckers and deliver to the farmers in what was emerging as Nigeria’s plantation state. A newly established indigenous biotech company took up the task with a view to supplying about two million pineapple suckers every month starting from 2004. The project was phenomenal and far-sighted, with a definite need to derive its life support from sustainable development and a government-to-government policy transfer. No doubt, the state never saw the envisioned revolution as the programme was killed by another kind of power:  politics. The question now is, if we were unable to carry out plant tissue culture breeding at a commercial level, can we compete in GMO production?

There are potential dangers in consuming GM foods. Allergenic genes could be accidentally transferred to other species, causing dangerous reactions in people with allergies. For example, some time ago, an allergenic Brazil-nut gene was transferred into a transgenic soybean variety, but its presence was discovered during the testing phase, and the soybean was not released. Second, unauthorised GM products intended for other uses could appear in human food materials. This, and other reasons, are why GM products are distributed with strict government regulation – in the Western world, there is a law that all GM foods must be labelled. Now, can we imagine the potential dangers in a country like ours where businessmen and traders take consumers for granted and consumer rights are not adequately protected? For sure, a single malpractice by one greedy businessman would spell doom for many Nigerians.

For farmers, because biotechnology research is carried out predominantly by the private sector and dominated by a few powerful companies, this means monopoly of planting materials. And to worsen the matter, these profit-driven companies have been alleged to produce certain materials that make them retain the absolute dependence of poor farmers. Another allegation is the use of what is known as “terminator” technologies to produce GM crops that are prevented from being grown the following year from their own seed; meaning that farmers could not save seeds for planting the next season as informed by natural sustainable modus operandi. In India, farmers are committing suicide daily because their traditional farming practice is undermined by the introduction of the popular genetically manufactured BT-cotton seeds. What is more, the proprietary nature of biotechnology products and processes may prevent their access for public-sector research, and this will surely have a strong negative impact on developing countries like Nigeria where no private research initiatives are in place. These all point to the wise direction: President Goodluck Jonathan should hold on to that Biosafety Bill, till the Federal Government strengthens the relevant institutions and properly enlightens the citizens on the potential benefits and dangers of using GMOs before diving in.