Stories by Etta Michael Bisong
Abuja
The National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) has reiterated its commitment to work with the National Cereal Research Institute (NCRI) to ensure health and environmental safety in the engineering of a rice crop to help reduce cost, increase production and income of farmers especially smallholders in Nigeria.
The crop, which is engineered with genes from three separate sources containing Nitrogen-Use Efficiency, Water-Use Efficiency and Salt-Tolerant Rice (NEWEST), is funded by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and expected to be experimented in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda.
Director General/Chief Executive Officer, NBMA, Sir Rufus Ebegba, who renewed the commitment during a tour to inspect the confined field trial site of the project, disclosed that his Agency is now best positioned with the establishment of the biosafety Act to superintend and facilitate activities of modern biotechnology in the country.
The DG/CEO, while lamenting that the institute was yet to commence work after one year of approval, stressed the need to adhere to the various regulatory measures specified in the new Act to promote the safe use and development of this technology.
“Without sounding threatening,” Sir Ebegba said, “there are penalties for any operator who contravenes the Act.”
The Act, according to him “is the only safety valve” for harnessing the potentials of modern biotechnology for Nigeria’s economic prosperity.
While acknowledging the long standing relationship enjoyed between the NCRI and his Agency even during its days as a Unit, said there is need to “serve our people, while pursuing a common interest.”
Consequently, he warned of the NBMA’s readiness to sanction anyone or those who undermine the requirements of the Act. He added that more guidelines regulations would be introduced to further deepen measures that guarantee safety in the use of modern biotechnology for socio-economic growth.
The NBMA boss hinted that issues of biosafety and biotechnology development have taken a new dimension with establishment of the law, and promised to partner with NCRI to ensure necessary safety requirements including its confined field trial site to foster as well as facilitate the execution of the project.
The head of Rice Research Programme and Project Inspector, Dr. Maji Alhassan Tswako, while responding to some of the observations particularly that of late commencement blamed the delay on the concept and design of the project.
While Uganda is presently at its fifth trail stage and Ghana third, Dr. Tswako, a plant breeder and assistant director with the institute narrated that the action was consciously conceptualised into the project plan to help correct mistakes noticed in the process of engineering the crop.
He said the institute in collaboration with Biosciences in the United States have engineered some seeds and will soon be shifted into the country for planting as soon as an import permit is granted.
