THE Director General National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), Dr Rufus Ebegba has said that part of the mandate of the agency is to ensure that farmers get the expected result after planting Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
Dr Ebegbe while speaking with Nigerian Tribune, explained that there are some claims made by developers of GMOs, so it is the mandate of the agency to monitor the crops to ensure that indeed the claims were accurate.
“After granting the permit for commercialization or environmental release, we do monitoring to confirm further whether the modification will break down.
“We also monitor to confirm farmers impression about the product, to confirm whether what is claimed that it will offer the farmers is really being offered to the farmers.
“We also monitor to see whether there are new manifestations may be toxin reactions or allergies, we monitor for all those things.
He said but currently, non of the GM crops that the agency granted permit for commercialization have entered the market, instead, what permit holders are doing is to multiply the seeds so that they can be more available for farmers.
On illegally imported GM products, Dr Ebegba said “we had to engage with the superstores management and working with the NAFDAC, we agreed on ensuring that no product that contain genetically modified ingredients will be allowed into superstores without biosafety certification and we are doing that, so far there have seen a lot of compliance, we have not seen any violation of that.
Speaking on biosecurity, the NBMA DG said in 2019 the national Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 was amended to include some emerging aspect of modern biotechnology and also the issues of biosecurity being put under the purview of the agency to ensure biosecurity within the country.
“So in view of that we have actually put in place mechanism to see that we are on top of the new mandates especially in the area of biosecurity, early this year we had a meeting with relevant Ministries and agencies to discuss on how we can as a country because every document or any decision we’re going to take is a national decision also understand too that there are some other Ministries and agencies that have some role to play in the area biosecurity.
“So what we are doing is to see that we harmonize all these various rules and to fill gaps that are in existence .
“In view of that we proposed to the stakeholders meeting we had in January, where we had Ministries, agencies, even the military the police and other arms of government involved in the discussion with the view of having a National biosecurity framework, which we encompass particularly policy and regulations and guidelines.
“So right now we have constituted a committee to come up with a National biosecurity policy draft that has been submitted right now we’re doing in-house review we hope to present to the larger stakeholders for review very soon”.
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