Environmental experts including, researchers, farmers and Civil Society Organisations, CSOs, and medical practitioners have called on the Federal Government, FG, to place a ban on Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs, following their health, environmental and economic hazards.
They also urged the FG to nullify all the permits earlier granted for the distribution of the GMOs which could be products brought in as packaged processed foods saying that such permits were not backed by adequate and certified risk assessment.
This was contained in a statement by Kome Odhomor, Media Communications Lead, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, at the end of a nationwide rally against GMOs.
The stakeholders also urged the Nigerian government to support and promote Agroecology as the viable alternative for food sovereignty and climate resilience in the country.
Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of HOMEF said Nigeria does not need GMOs to address food insecurity. He insisted that the design of those crops does not support local economic growth but promotes dependency on corporate seed supply.
Bassey also decried farmers were not able to replant the GM seeds after harvest due to declining yields regretting how they are being compelled to continuously purchase the seeds every new season from corporate entities.
This reflects neo-colonialism and corporate capture of our food system -something we shouldn’t take lightly.” He noted.
On his part, the National Co-coordinator of the GMO-Free Nigeria Alliance, Ifeanyi Nwankwere, said GMOs approved in Nigeria, so far are not currently being labelled and more so, Nigeria’s socio-economic context will not allow labelling to be effective considering how food is sold in cups and basins in open markets.
Nwankwere also expressed reservations on the biosafety regulatory system in Nigeria saying it was not designed in a way that assures safety with regard to GMOs.
Another major flaw with the biosafety regulatory structure is the composition of the board of the NBMA with key promoters of GMOs e.g the National Biotechnology Development and Research Agency sitting on that board to decide on permits that agencies including the NABDA will apply for, “he said.
The statement also noted that Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje, Deputy Director at Environmental Rights Action who coordinated the rally in the FCT cautioned that several other countries including Russia, Mexico, Uganda and up to 23 more countries have placed bans on GMOs – some partial bans while others have put in place complete ban.
She highlighted the recent ban on GMO corn in Mexico. “The courts highlighted the threats of the GMO variety to the country’s rich diversity of corn, stating that the genetically engineered corn posed the risk of imminent harm to the environment.
In South Africa, after a nine-year legal battle, the Supreme Court agreed with the Plaintiffs that South Africa’s Executive Council of the GMO Act had approved Monsanto’s drought-resistant maize without fully assessing its safety for human health and the environment, disregarding evidence from other experts.
The Director of Programmes at HOMEF, Joyce Brown in her remarks noted the presence of over 50 imported packaged food products containing GM ingredients.
These products are abundant in our market shelves – different brands including cereals, vegetable oils, spices, ice-cream, cake mixes etc as revealed by a survey which Health of Mother Earth Foundation carried out across 10 Nigerian cities in 2018, 2019 and 2023.”
Brown added that GMOs pose serious health risks, highlighting a recent report by an Iranian researcher that GMO soy in a medium-term feeding test revealed significant damage to internal organs such as liver and kidney in rats. Brown noted that so far, there is no evidence that the NBMA has conducted medium or long-term feeding tests to ascertain the safety of the products approved for use in Nigeria.
