GMO Adoption

We are Informing the Adoption of GMOs & GM Foods all Wrong!

Author: Toheeb Azeez

Hundreds of Nigerians Protesting GMOs, rally led by HOMEF

Innovations do not just get accepted and adopted by virtue of being new, advance, true or even delivering on their promises. Rather, the reality is other significant factors than this influence adoption. The human nature and experiences, the challenges and concerns that come with innovation, how humans face and process innovation, matter more. 

I have observed that innovation originators, and disseminators in particular, often do not grasp these important dynamics and consider them in the process of innovation creation and dissemination.

While innovation promises efficiency, effectiveness and better results, it changes the conventional ways of things, disrupts routines and normal lives. Also, humans are complex beings while they are imaginative and futuristic about fulfilling their needs and desires and how they go about their living, most want stability and, if at all any, a minimal disruption of how they have always done things.

They want advancement but loathe the risks, uncertainties and downsides that come with it, and would at any chance rather stick to what they have always known and have been used to especially when those things function well and/or make their lives go on normally as the new thing and present zero or little disturbances and danger compared to the latter. 

This is one reason things that diverge from the norm have seen strong opposition in the course of history. Galileo Galilei was house arrested and with his idea disregarded when he posited in contrary to the generally accepted knowledge in his time, that the sun is at the centre of the solar system and the earth and other planetary bodies revolve around the sun.1The new findings contradicted the religious-societal dogma that served to shape people’s lives and held social fabric together in Rome.  

Nonetheless, G. Galilei understanding and acknowledging the realities of the time and society he lived and what it takes for unorthodox idea to be accepted rather than give up went on adjusting his approach; writing books and publishing theories explaining himself, gathering evidences observing space with telescope, discussing with commoners on his findings, engaging in debates to factually prove his position, and even exercising patience in the course of public hearings, which made his idea entertained and prevail today.

Few organisations, bodies and companies have come to comprehend all this about communicating novel developments and through the incorporation of learnings overtime, improved on how they promote new products, services, ideas, behaviours or practices.

They put a lot of efforts into research, carrying the public and concerned bodies along, ensuring safety of product or idea, and disseminating honest, robust information -even making known manageable and easily gone with time side effects.

They also understand (for those disseminating mass novelty) that innovation adoption across an audience category does not happen the same and instantly.

Socioeconomic characteristics (education, income, status), social thinking and readiness, personal value and state of mind all affect innovation receptivity, where there are those who are quick to jump on innovation (the innovators), followed by those who adopt as they perceive a benefit (the early adopters), then individuals who take their time to assess the values and practical benefits of the innovation (the early majority), people who are skeptical and would require more  information to adopt (the late majority) and lastly the laggards (slow adopters and most resistant to change).

They know innovation adoption follows a standard bell shape curve, from a point where people are being doubtful and with little adoption, through a sharp rise and reaching a critical mass where it takes little or no effort to get more people on board, to arriving at a peak of large audience and after then declining.

Innovation adoption strategies have then been developed accordingly: from creating product so easy to grasp and use, accompanying with information in layman understanding, and delivering on its promises at an affordable cost with little or no side effects; to finding the most cosmopolitan of target audience that others within a group seek information from, or leaders commanding, with honest leading, respect and loyalty of many followers, and exposing them to the innovation where they inform others adoption.

In the early 2000s when poliomyelitis ravaged northern Nigeria and hit Kano state most, parents had rejected potent vaccine for its cure from the World Health Organisation owing to mistrust on the newly developed vaccine to be adversely affecting fertility and decimating population, and the refusal causing death and limb loss for many children.

A strategy which entailed independent, peer review of the vaccine, canvass from Islamic countries and figures on the balanced report and, most importantly, in 2004 the then state’s governor publicly vaccinating his children helped dispel the long-held conspiracy and informed parents’ approval of the vaccine.2

The ways that have been/are being explored to get farmers and people in Nigeria to accept and adopt genetically modifying/modified organisms and foods and other novel farming ideas have been devoid to a large extent, consideration of human nature, experience and concerns, how humans face innovation and the processes they go through to adopt innovation, the challenges that come with innovations, and strategies in this line to necessitate adoption.

Anyone who is familiar with the landscape and discourse of advancing agriculture in Nigeria to achieve food security would acknowledge the aversion and large unreceptively to novel foods and agricultural methods in the nation. There are four vital reasons for this:

1.       Local and global crises

At this time, people are very concerned about what they eat than ever. Cancer is one of the leading killer diseases and causes of death in the world today, and some forms and their increasing occurrences have been linked to eating novel foods grown with chemicals, practices associated with food growing such as pesticide use and reportedly to, consuming genetically modified foods.

Just in the last two years the giant agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology company, Monsanto had been indicted in the United States for its glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer causing cancer for two couples and a groundskeeper who used it after dispelling numerous other allegations and was ordered to pay a total fine of $2 billion and $289 million respectively.3

Monsanto was accused of not informing and in another way misinforming by downplaying its herbicide’s ingredient capability of causing cancer. The company still battles many lawsuits today.

Complicating issues, in this time where the world has seen as much as 50% rise in allergy cases in the last 20 years and with a rising phenomenon of super bugs resistant to broad-spectrum and array of antibiotics coincides with genetic modification and engineering gaining global ground.

There is public heightened consciousness with the intense back and forth debates in science field on the likelihood of allergies, antibiotics resistance and cancer arising from transgenes from allergens, cross-transfer of resistant genes from GM foods to gut bacteria, and mutation in cells from incorporating foreign genes respectively, of biotechnology processes.4

Paramount issues as all this and others are sending fear waves around with many countries in the world instituting stringent policies and biosafety measures. The UK for instance strictly regulates the use and marketing of GMO, GM and hydroponic foods and has moved to relying more on traditional food systems6, while several countries in the EU (Germany, France, Scotland, etc.) have placed outright ban on some/all GMOs5.

Nigeria’s is apparent with the establishment of biosafety frameworks, bill and act to monitor and regulate biotechnology procedures, applications, and materials influx her sovereignty7and with the increasing yearn for natural, organic foods within the country.

2.       Distrust with establishment, state, media and researchers

The public has overtime grown a huge distrust to the media, government and its institutions, nutritionists and scientists, seen as siding with big corporations and ruthless capitalism, choosing profit over people and environment, and misinforming on issues (as discussed in the previous section and) as link of sugar to obesity and diabetes9, cigarette and throat cancer10, encouraging processed foods go unabated feeding into heart related diseases, playing down environmental impact and allowing for oil and gas explorations in communities which in turn poison water bodies, aquatic animals and farmlands, causing food poisoning and chronic health issues, and gas flaring breeding acute respiratory disorders.

Global public distrust is evident with the call for overhaul of economy and business growth models to have stakeholder and environment wellbeing at the core and the present 5G-causing-covid19 pandemic conspiracies rocking the world. The 1996 Pfizer’s Trovan-drug trials for meningitis in the northern Nigeria which left so many children with brain damage, paralysed and dead and that led, in part, to the 2003 tragic Kano polio anti-vaccine episode exemplifies local distrust.2

A 2014 famous lawsuit filed in a high court in the United Kingdom -and not in a Nigerian court as of mistrust reasons -by communities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria against Shell on oil-induced environmental crisis in the region having hands of the Nigeria government11 and the 2017 controversies of alleged monkey pox vaccination in the south eastern Nigeria by the Nigerian government to infect people with diseases and control population, among others, show the continued distrust in recent times.12

While the latter -a backdrop of unresolved political issues between the Ibos and the Nigerian government -was dispelled as untrue, some quarters have questioned the collusion of the media and government to bury the truth.

All these issues have made the Nigerian public cautious and unreceptive of innovations and novel foods deployed by the government, private bodies even when backed by scientists and the media. 

3.       Farmers Background, Attributes and Experiences

Another crucial reason is of the farmers and their socioeconomic characteristics. Majority of the nation’s farmers are still non-literate, poor and are stuck in primitive production means.

They cannot decipher the technicalities and procedures of GMO et al and lack access to means that enable them understand them and in an age of fake news, can easily be a victim of evading safe and working novel ideas with disinformation or as the case of the cancer patients vs Monsanto, become a victim of misinformation and/or a lack of information.

Their low-income status nature where trade-offs during innovation adoption phase favour not something new ensures they remain calling on their crude farming means. Even, their reliance on old production ways that have always worked for them in spite existence of new methods that could do better hinders their receptivity to innovations.

Previously adopted innovations which failed to yield promised benefits or left farmers with adverse health conditions and/or impoverished them, vivid with the Bt cotton experience of Burkinabes (discussed later on) and adverse effect of pesticides on African farmers add to the unreceptive nature.19

The much talked about Bt cotton woes-Indian farmers suicide and Brazil farmers-Monsanto legal battle on soy seed patents leaving Brazilian farmers in bad shape give a global scope to farmers terrible experiences with novel farming.21,22

Also, the neglect of farmers’ participation in the process of innovation development, one which a review of the three decades of extension and research activities in Africa and Asia has been highlighted as part of factors responsible for agriculture failure in said developing worlds, worsens the problem of farmers not being accepting of innovations. 

4.       Information gap, misconceptions and misinformation

Also is the muddle up and scientific jargons the Nigerian audience is caught in -like what genetically modified organisms and foods are and what it means to actually grow foods with hydroponics, greenhouse system, with an absence of easily understood explanations.

For instance, in the case of GMO, genetic modification is defined to be the infusion of gene(s) from another organism into the DNA of a crop of interest to confer special attributes, as in the transfer of pest-resistant gene of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) into the DNA of food crops battling severe pest problems4 for example, cowpea from Maruca pest.

By this definition, genetic modification would then mean modifying crops by addition of new genes to the host DNA, an introduction which has been said does not impair genetic composition and expression. However, many people have struggled to reconcile this, with GMO realities.

The GM Bollgard II cotton infused with Bt resistant gene which despite delivering intended results controlling the cotton bollworm pest problem of Burkinabes, would go on to impair the fibre length and quality of the cash crop, and also the MON 88708 soybean developed by Monsanto reinforced with gene resistance to actions of herbicides that would kill yield-decreasing weeds, otherwise reduced the legume’s nutrients in contrast to same unmodified soybean.

In this regard, people do not believe the conventional GMO definition of just gene infusion and with no adverse effect but rather as DNA alteration, with their understanding of the DNA housing genetic instructions determining the expression of certain traits and how proteins and other complex compounds develop, grow and function, where an insertion of new gene changes how those compounds turn out and work, causing mishaps.

Furthermore, a lot of people still struggle to understand the mechanisms of glasshouse where in the case of using artificial light source to replace or augment sunlight energy stirs issues of food safety.

And even when some hydroponic system like the rockwool require earth medium but with nutrient solutions delivered, people are befuddled with the scientists’ explanations of the nutrient solution-based growing nothing but a replication of conditions in the field where the soil serves as medium and nothing else, supplying same nutrients given in simulated condition.

However, in all of this, conflicting information and an absence of balanced information or a presence of misleading information circulating the net, media and even from organisations that should be enlightening the public has not been helpful.

These are all valid reasons, the realities there are and that we live in, and which must be acknowledged and addressed. Nevertheless, revealing from the race to introduce, regulate and ensure adoption of GMO would show all these have not been taken into consideration and/or are being repeated/exacerbated.

Clashing Interests and backdrop Suspicions

The very first issue that stirred the Nigerian public as regards GMO was the rallying around and pushing of the biosafety bill by biotechnology promoting bodies, NABDA and OFAB (the two bodies termed proGMO by anti-GMO campaigners and some concerned section of the public), the passing which informed the National Biosafety Act (NBA).

The act itself established in 2015 immediately pursued the separation of the biotechnology regulating body in the country, the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), from bodies as NABDA (Nigeria’s chief biotechnology promoting & coordinating body) and OFAB (a biotechnology awareness forum created by NABDA, AATF & ARCN) to avoid conflict of interests.

However, this singular deed -although pro-GMO actions and the much talked about aiding of Monsanto in expanding its GMO market in Nigeria by the OFAB and NABDA (complaints detailed in a 2016 Premium Times Editorial and in an NGO’s, HOMEF, letter to the National Assembly and protest manifesto)16,26,33 and others we would see later on constructed the view -is one critics often reference when emphasising the purposely relaxed nature of the passed act’s clauses to allow for pedestrian grant of GMOs and GM foods, even though the act enacted is vital to regulating biotech processes. 

One anti-GMO org change.org (having many values opposed to NABDA’s and particularly OFAB’s) talking on the collusion of transgenes-canvassing bodies with GMO companies to put in place feeble biotech regulations and laws in Africa, in the wake of the NBA passing remarked: “…the National Biosafety Bill…was solely written for the purpose of enabling biotech corporation grow GMO with very few biosafety checks and balances without the welfare of the consumers in mind”.

During the second hearing of the bill in the senate in 2014, lamenting and adding to the voices on concerns of the overwhelming push and positive remarks on biotechnology procedures with little priority for safety by the biotech championing orgs, the Executive Director of Society for the Improvement of Rural People (SIRP) Dr Chris Ugwu would echo the concerns of the change.org, stressing the bill’s murky provision for public consultation, its passive role in the process of GMO approval and “slap on the wrist fines…, leaving wide gaps that would ensure that those who wish to pollute the environment get away”.

Role Impersonation, Contradictory validation & further Distrust

The perceived role sabotage and distrust would continue to plague the National Biosafety Act and its offshoot agency in asserting confidence and its capacity to regulate biotechnology processes and applications in the nation.

In this line, people question how Nigeria relies on other countries, especially the United States for GMO safety despite the latter’s undermined biosafety laws. While Nigeria does not, with her having a separate regulatory act charged with such as we have seen, the misconstrued thinking can be traced to OFAB.

The Forum’s Nigeria Chapter’s Director who also doubles as Assistant Director for NABDA in an interview with TheGuardian Newspaper in May 29th, 2018 professed GMO safety with the US National Academy of Sciences’ 2-year evaluation of GM crops and in another interview with an agricultural company in late August the same year reiterated her trust in Washington’s adoption of GMO, saying the “US…has the most stringent regulations…and…22yrs…safe history of use…of GM foods” and reassures in this line Nigeria treading the safe path with GMO adoption.

This analogy and position would arouse public suspicions on, deepen its resentment to and further undermine the NBMA, NBA and GMO discourse, as the US is no party of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) (one Nigeria signed in 2000 and ratified in 2003) that seeks human, animal, biodiversity and environment safety priority in the process of biotechnology applications, and in the country are declassified files on the food industries’, and in particular Monsanto’s, malpractices lobbying GMO safety regulations to see several of GM crops and complementary products (like the cancer-causing, environment-polluting, superweed-breeding glyphosate) enter/stay in the United States’ agri-food system and market where they are not labelled for consumers’ awareness.17,18

These discrepancies are what concerned people and orgs as the once mentioned change.org and thehopefulNigerian led by Gbadebo Rhode-Vivour (who debated NBMA CEO, Dr Rufus Egbegba on GMO, live on AIT TV) highlight.

Exaggerated & Misleading GMO benefits and promises

The aforementioned misalignment is compounded by promises dished out by biotech promoting orgs of GMO adoption as the efficient and almost certain way to reaching national food security and sufficiency which would allow Nigeria return to its glory exporting days and realising huge foreign earnings.14,35

The promises are of improved yield with reduced losses to pests, diseases and weeds interferences; efficient resources use and greatly lowered pollution and health impairment with water-conserving crops and induced nitrogen fixation in non-leguminous crops; and enhanced nutritive value, of fortification with compositions as vitamin A and other phytochemicals.

Adopting Bt Cowpea modified to resist infestation by the virulent pest Maruca known to unleash close to 80% damage on cultivated cowpea fields has been said would increase yield by 20% and enable a ₦48 billion annual revenue.13

The same has been commented on the approved and commercialised Bt cotton resistant to bollworm attack. While some of these promises are true and feasible, many are not and have been proven improbable, not prudent and sustainable, and an adoption of these modified crops has sometimes come with consequences.

  • Food Security and Post-Harvest loss

The problem of food insecurity the world faces today is not of food unavailability but of inaccessibility to the much available food. Food production has increased in the last few decades to have per person today 17% more food.23

Of the global food increases and abundance, nearly 1.3 billion tonnes (that is, one-third) go to waste yearly. In the developing world, most of the 670 million tonnes waste happen at retail and consumption end. The developing world having the highest prevalence of undernourished (PoU) people accounts for 630 million tonnes of the 1.3 billion tonnes food waste. Post-harvest loss is responsible for 40% of this 630 million tonnes.24

Africa leading the PoU in the developing world has a post-harvest loss rate of about 50%, and Nigeria “one of the most food insecure nation in Africa” having 13.4% of her population undernourished has post-harvest losses taking 50-70% of her annual total produced foods.

For Nigeria, as other developing countries, seeing more postharvest losses of fruits and vegetables, root and tubers, inadequate processing and storage facilities, poor road network and technical inefficiencies account for up to 70% of the postharvest losses; pests and diseases and other factors are liable for the remaining 30%.37

Although pests and diseases have been known to cause major problem and waste but in storage period particularly for grains as maize, about 80-90% damage.36Oil seeds, pulses and cereals are less damaged and wasted at 25% compared to other crops.

Even the problem of pests and diseases in planting and post planting periods are a backdrop of relentless monoculture cropping system that allows for pests and diseases to breed and build up beyond threshold level and inflicting severe damage on crops as cowpea.

Thus people have asked (as have been seen in cases of disease-carrying pest growing resistance to remedies which have been effective against them), “What happens when Maruca vitrata go on to develop resistance to Bt of cowpea after being potent? Another genetic modification to curb the new problem mushrooming into cycles of gene manipulations wreaking havoc in the race to control the pest?”.

While growing pest-and-disease resistant crops could help in reaching food security and particularly for some crops, a simple practice of crop rotation or mixed farming, demand-driven production, efficient supply chain and responsive value chain, linking farmers to market, developing farmers’ capacity to preserve food, making available adequate processing and storage facilities and good road networks that curb food waste, putting in place measures that limit income and power inequalities which pushes up purchasing power and allow for broader access to food, would do more good for wider categories of crops and people in reaching food security with presented postharvest losses statistics.

  • GM Crop and Pollution

The merit of significant pollution and health impairment eradication also is not entirely true. For instance, the newest GM crops MON 88701 cotton and MON 88708 soybean developed by Monsanto have been criticised for increasing herbicides spraying and breeding super weeds.15

These GM crops were modified to tolerate actions from multiple herbicides that would otherwise kill weeds reducing cotton and soybean’s yield in the US. But the non-targeted application to the specific weeds and the indiscriminate spraying to control weeds has led to environmental hazard and certain weeds developing high resistance to herbicides where they are very difficult to control.

In this regard, herbicide traces have been found in these GM crops since they resist herbicides (e.g. glyphosate) but still absorb them, hence the GM crops termed “storehouse for herbicides” and are dangerous when consumed.

One professor has linked the increasing use of glyphosate-based herbicides to increasing cases of autism among children in the US. And as discussed in this section, the GM maize and soybean in Nigeria have been developed in a similar manner as US’ GM crops to resist herbicide and therefore presents same concerns and risks talked about. 

  • Export and Revenue

The Bt cotton approved and commercialised in Nigeria has yielded bad results in Burkina Faso, a place where it was initially approved and planted. The GM Bollgard II cotton although curbed the menace of bollworm, it came with a compromise on cotton quality. It produced short and inferior fibres compared to the long and fine quality fibre of the cotton previously grown in Burkina Faso.

The result was livelihood loss for many farmers, collapse of the cotton industry and with the new cotton products not finding buyers in the international market. Reuters-Investigates from reviewing memos made known that Monsanto paid $3 million in compensation to the cotton industry.19

Adding to the GM foods export woes is Thailand’s major export canned Tuna fish being rejected by trade partner Japan (a state having staunch disapproval of GMO) on grounds of the Tuna canned in GM soy oil.25

Seeking redress, Thailand filed a case against Japan at the WTO for unfair trade practices, maintaining its Tunas are not preserved with GM soy oil, however, Japan’s action had been informed of Thailand’s approval of GMOs and growing GM Foods.

Whichever be the case, the above scenario goes to show exporting GM foods are not as basic and rewarding as portrayed with a lot of countries averse to it. The European Union is Nigeria’s largest trading partner by group of countries. About $12 billion of Nigerian goods go to the EU annually – Netherlands ($4.9b), France ($3.6b), Italy ($3.1b) & Germany ($1.2b) -and $1.2b export to the UK which recently exited the EU.31

The Union and the aforementioned countries have strong debates on GMOs and have banned or restricted and established strict laws and regulations on the use of GMOs. Also, India receiving largest of Nigeria’s export in country terms worth $8.3b has been ramming up strict biotech laws and regulations with majority of its 300,000 farmers’ suicide in last few decades associated mostly with risks and losses to Bt cotton adoption. These bottlenecks are not making exporting GMOs prudent and lucrative. 

All these concerns eventually come to incriminate the Nigeria’s biosafety framework, Act and Agency, and even the Nigerian government. People have wondered if the NBMA has the wherewithal to monitor and regulate GMO in the nation, if the nation takes paramount the safety of Nigerians in the GMO discourse.Many questions are being asked:

  • With the inadequate or near absent infrastructure or systemic rot across all sectors and institutes in the country, one exposed by the present covid19 pandemic (I wrote about this recently), what capacity has Nigeria to monitor, regulate and test GMO and GM food safety?
  • How is it that many countries with sophisticated biosafety law and infrastructure to determine and enforce GMO safety, unlike Nigeria, have banned GMOs and GM foods but Nigeria has not? Does the NBMA know something the public knows not? This, the people would like to know.
  • If the NBMA is effective, how is that its roles and responsibilities are being assumed and discharged by some other organisations having interests differing to its?
  • Why is it that the Bt cotton, GM soybean and maize, developed of the standard scientific knowledge in the world, that have given disastrous results in some countries and thus have been met with disapproval, are being approved and commercialised in Nigeria?
  • With the approval to plant and commercialise GMOs amidst all the issues mentioned above, people would like to know if the Nigerian public, biodiversity, ecosystem safety really is a priority.
National Biosafety Bill, Acts, Agencies & Nigeria Woes

Murky NBMA competence and Trust

On the 13th of September 2017 the National Biosafety Agency in a conference in Abuja, acting on a tipoff, alerted the Nigerian public on unapproved imported GM maize in the country.27

Two months after, the agency working with the Nigerian Custom Service would announce the impoundment and repatriation of the said import worth $10 million-dollar to country of export, Argentina.28

The NBMA made known it verified the GM status of the crop with six independent, separate tests and analyses and called the importer in for questioning.

While this would portray the agency’s capacity, it is however contradictory that the agency would approve for release and use the same GM grains to the company, WACOT, which imported them illegally and without sanction despite provisions made for biosafety law by-passers and that it had rejected the GM products prior.

However, the seeds might not have been confiscated for being harmful and rather of importation without approval where when tested and if deemed safe with the standard importation procedure followed could have been approved as the NBMA responded to this criticism that it granted permit to the said company based on a later testing and advice from the National Biosafety Committee and National Biosafety Technical Sub-committee.29

Nonetheless the approval of the GM grains coming within few weeks flouting the stipulated 270 days approval period, without consultation with the food and drug testing agency of the nation, NAFDAC, as enshrined by the law, and the public not kept abreast with the whole process has been questioned.30

Aside all this, another happening would question the NBMA’s capacity. In the 1st quarter of 2018, the biosafety agency published an edition termed “NBMA Warns Superstore”. This was in response to an independent body survey that had revealed unapproved GM products flooding stores in 10 of the 36 states in Nigeria and even unlabeled.

This implicates the NBMA. The incidence goes to show 3 years after its establishment to the 2018 GMOs-flooding-markets in-Nigeria saga, the NBMA still is yet to develop full capacity to stem the flowing of unapproved GM products into the country.

Undemocratic Process to GMO Approval

Developed within the period 2002 to 2005 informed by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and supported by UNEP, the National Biosafety Frameworks (NBF) would come to improve on “method of assuring public participation in decision making” in biotechnology applications neglected in the preceding 1994 Biosafety Guideline.

It enshrined the public [independent researchers (biologist, physical and social scientists), organised private sector and representatives of distinguished NGOs] as part of the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) one which serves as Competent National Authority (CNA) and would work with and under -as laid out by the NBF -its superintended the National Focal Authority (NFA) solely occupied by the National Biosafety Agency to ensure “the safe management of biotechnology activities, including research, development, introduction and the use of the products of modern biotechnology”.

The NBMA created 10 years after the NBF drafting although would affirm the importance of public participation and, indeed, honour it in the process of vetting GMO products, however would have some shortcomings worthy of mention in this regard.

December 7th, 2018 hundreds of individuals from different demographics and backgrounds – agriculturalists, researchers, students, youngsters, women, men, environmentalists -would convene in the nation’s capital, Abuja, to protest GMOs in the period of Bt cowpea and cotton approval for release.

Two years onward March 20, 2020, another protest in tandem with the former would take place in Lagos and this time taken to the state’s governor, Mr Babjide Sanwoolu. The two protests have a common theme among others, “the approval of GMO imports and use without thorough public participation”.

However it was not that the NBMA did not allow for public participation. In fact, for the five GM crops (Bt Cotton, Cowpea PBR, Newest rice, Sorghum ABS, Cassava) approved the NBMA had made, as required by the NBF, announcement for each permit-granting in three wide circulating national dailies to allow for public commentary.

Buttressing this, the NBMA published on its website GM soy bean and maize (herbicide tolerant), GM maize (resisting stem borer), GM cassavas (biofortified with iron and zinc and modified to inhibit starch breakdown) application dossiers and gave information on where the confined trials were taking place.

It also mandated applicants to give holistic information on historic background on the area the GM crop would be grown, document and communicate observations and results of the whole growing process.

The problem with the public is not of participation but that the participation does not get considered in decision making. Dr Ugwu of the SIRP captures this better “the bill does not even say if comments made by members of the public that may get to see the application would be considered. Seeing an application by chance and commenting on it cannot be construed as public participation” and according to Bassey Director of HOMEF, “applications are just granted without due consultation of the public”.

  • Absence of Separate, Cross-Research System

The statement in the last line of the previous section is true. People are not being carried along through the research and experimentation phases of the GM trials. Scientific reports on the whole experimentation phase are not communicated with the public. What is are just verdicts on the GM products based on what the NBMA knows. The implication is that the scientific reports are not and, with not being available, cannot be subjected to peer review.

People have even questioned why there are no independent and separate experimentations aside the ones conducted by the NBMA and applicants seeking permit for GMO release. Dr. M.B. Yerima, President of the Biotechnology Society of Nigeria (BSN) although supported biosafety bill during its hearing at the senate in 2014, emphasised “the need to have specialised and independent laboratories with the agency for food testing, toxicological testing of pollutants, culture collection and preservation to ensure reliability and no cooking of data”.

What he mentioned far back in time is what people yearn for today. But the NBMA still maintains NGOs, CSOs, farmers group form part of its decision-making body; however, the names of these organisations are not mentioned or published for public knowledge, leaving the pubic in the dark.  

  • Absence of Reports from Institutions, no farmer participation

Forming part of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) and charged with “facilitating scientific, technical and environmental information on GMOs” to support the NBC, all institutions in Nigeria (public and private research institutes, universities and polytechnics, international research centres, industrial research and development units) were given powers to conduct and review biotechnology researches. International Agricultural Research, Zaria ABU, National Root Crop-Research Institute Umidike Abia and International Institute for Tropical Agriculture are few that have stood out developing and carrying out confined trials of GM crops.

However, their researches are not communicated with the general public although they may be, within the institutes’ four walls and with the NBMA as expected of them to submit annual report on their projects.

Thus, their researches do not get subjected to peer review from other institutes nor do the public get enlightened with findings of the researches. Also, as institutions are being involved in the process of innovation creation, farmers have been virtually left out of the picture but are called in for field trials for approved GM crops -like they were for BPR cowpea and Bt cotton.

A top-down and lording over approach which understands not farmers’ realities, is a recipe to irresponsive innovation and disaster when farmers’ indigenous knowledge, experiences and socioeconomic characteristics are not taken into consideration, since they will be the ones to use the product of the research.

CONCLUSION

From the presentation so far in this write up, it becomes evident that GMO discourse in the nation has been warped in different complex issues; historical realities breeding cautiousness to novel farming technique and products, controversies and misconceptions (founded and unfounded) informing resistance, and the manner in which the regulatory actors on and orgs promoting biotech have steered issues and their actions have neglected these realities and have degenerated into distrust and resentment.

RECOMMENDATION

Robust research, honest report and information, and carrying of the public along are important to finding light at the end of the GMO discourse in Nigeria. People have access to information than ever before and are able to draw on historical experiences and current realities to make sense of things and reach conclusions. It does not mean that their conclusions will always be right, however, a shove-down the-throat approach of innovation, presenting misleading information, are not helpful either and will only go to breed further distrusts, even when innovation presents some benefits.

The nation as it seeks benefit of biotechnology to solve some of its problems and meet up to par with other nations must take safety of its people and its sovereignty -animals, environment, ecosystem, biodiversity -paramount. It must follow fair processes to weigh the pros and cons, ask itself serious questions -Is it needed, and at this time? Are our traditional systems ineffective and inefficient or that they need fixing? Which is prudent and takes into consideration existing realities, the traditional methods or conventional methods?

The nation led by the federal government and represented by the Federal Ministry of Environment on novel procedure matters must know GMO is beyond just innovation, that it is embedded in social, ecological, ethical and political issues as found anywhere in the world, and must enjoin democracy in the process of decision making as it is in progressive societies and restructure its biotechnology promoting and safety ensuring bodies in this regard to avoid duplications of roles, clashing of interests and interference.

Also, when GMO is proven safe or a decision is reached, it must be understood that there will still be some people who will not adopt -some who will later adopt after period of resistance, while some will never accept -hence, that there is need for labeling of GM products and GMOs and that those who still disapprove are not victimised and are protected.

Of all, the nation and those at the helm of affairs must understand that even when GMO adoption is recommended but that there are more concerns of ethical, ecological, social and political issues about the novel product adoption, GMO approval for release can still be retracted, as stated in the nation’s biosafety framework.

“Where, on appropriate risk assessment, a biotechnology product, application or procedure turns up a negative recommendation, this shall not be overruled for reason of political or economic expediency, However, a positive recommendation may be overruled if it is not politically and economically expedient.”

About the Author:

Toheeb Azeez (The Lasgidi Farmer) hones a master’s degree in Communication for Development from the University of Reading and a first degree on Agricultural Extension from the University of Ibadan. He is passionate about sharing insightful information about the agriculture sector that inform people on happenings, rapid dynamics and opportunities in the sector which help them make good decisions and take beneficial actions. He currently innovatively farms where he gains inspiration to write creatively.

Toheeb Azeez can be reached at tohzeez@gmail.com     

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