Group demands revision of bio-safety laws

Director of the Ecological Think Tank, Health of Mother Health Foundation (HOMEF), Reverend Nnimmo Bassey, has demanded for “a radical revision of the National Bio-safety Management Agency (NBMA) Act 2015 and the installation of a neutral Bio-safety Regulatory Agency that is totally different from the extremely pro-GMO one currently in place.”

Reverend Bassey made the demand at a Farmers’ Dialogue on promoting Bio-safety in Nigeria held in Benin City last weekend.

He stated that scare tactics of ever-growing population has been used as an excuse to force the diversion of public funds into private industrial agriculture as well as the introduction of genetically engineered crops into Africa and other parts of the world.

Reverend Bassey stressed that dialogue spaces provide platforms for examining the quality of seeds available to farmers and the special threats posed by opening of the flood gates to genetically engineered crops to Nigeria.