Dr Rufus Ebegba, Director General National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), we just read a report by Wole Oyebade (http://www.manishchandra.org/?p=62365 ) on your comments made on 30th June 2016 to journalists at Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos about the stakeholders health concerns and implications of the permits you granted to Monsanto for maize field trial and release of Bt cotton into the market place.
I agree that the National Biosafety Management Agency Act 2015 is defective because it only requires newspaper announcements of the GMO applications. This is severely inadequate and must change. It only shows how much the biotechnology companies effectively lobbied to script the Biosafety Act 2015 for Nigeria, surreptitiously. They circumvented the Precautionary Principles enshrined in the Cartagena Protocol and the African Model Law, which Nigeria is a signatory. This we must correct. We see from your response to Journalists that there is a big information gap between the stakeholders and the NBMA. The stakes are very high for Nigeria and the issues are of National Security importance. The details are explained in an article titled: The Grand Conspiracy to Destroy Nigeria published online in New York 247.com (http://newyorkdaily247.com/index.php/component/k2/item/545-by-philip-njemanze-md-the-grand-conspiracy-to-destroy-nigeria ) also ATTACHED HERE.
The article provides useful insights on how the biotechnology companies are sponsoring terrorism of Boko Haram to displace farmers in the Northeast “food basket’ of Nigeria. They destroy the crops, stored seeds and homes in the farming communities. So the farmers become internally displaced persons (IDPs) out of their villages. The farmers loose their saved natural seeds. The agents of these biotechnology companies now comeback as international aid agencies to rehabilitate the IDPs with GMO seeds given on television and announced legitimately sometimes through government who do not know their motives. As a result, the biotechnology companies and their billionaire investors have captured the FOOD SECURITY of Nigeria. Once our food sovereignty is lost, we loose our political independence. This is the crux of the Boko Haram insurgency. Though an in-depth reading of the article will show you that the biotechnology companies are after using ovarian eggs from poor Nigeria women for human organ cloning. The biotechnology companies need 100 million ovarian eggs per year for 5-10 years to perfect the main technique for cloning called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT). These ovarian eggs would come from at least 10 million Nigerian women, who will die in 2-3 years from Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrom (OHSS) that includes liver failure, kidney failure, cancers, infections etc. OHSS is occurring in many young Nigerian girls donating ovarian eggs through IVF clinics for money.
Nigeria is the largest exporter of human ovarian eggs for experimental cloning in Western labs, due to lack of governmental control. They need 100 million ovarian eggs per year for 5-10 years to perfect the main technique for cloning called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT). The billionaire investors in these biotechnology companies also own the cloning industry. They project they can make 30 trillion USD from this business in 5-10 years if they can enslave Nigerian women through GMO seeds NOW. The Western billionaires will become trillionaires! They also will need to control the entire Nigerian polity. Simply, who will vote a politician who cannot give our GMO seeds during campaign? The most endangered people in Nigeria are the politicians in the first order, should they allow this to happen. The biotechnology companies are applying the Kinsinger Maxim, “control the food, you control the people”. So for the poor Nigerian woman is “your egg for GMO seeds”, the food for human ovarian egg program has began!. The have crafted specific sections of the National Health Act 2014 to facilitate human organ and ovarian egg poaching without consent, and are set to acquire major hospitals in Nigeria for this purpose.
Bill and Melinda Gates heads the Federal Ministry of Health committee for the implementation of the National Health Act 2014 along with 18 other Western entities out of the 27 organizations involved! The NBMA Act 2015 was crafted to legitimize these evil activities of biotechnology companies and their billionaire investors with the endorsement of certain Western governments promoting GMOs in Africa. As you rightly mentioned, a number of GMO crops has been released and still sold before the NBMA Act 2015, these include GMO yellow cassava deceptively called provitamin cassava, GMO yellow yam, yellow maize GMO sweet potato, soyabean etc. Our 14 million members from over 100 organizations comprising farmers, environmentalists, doctors, scientists and social activists will be monitoring the activities of the NBMA towards stopping the marketing of these dangerous and deceptive GMO crops illegally released into the market place under funding from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through IITA and National Root Crops Research Institutes (NRCRI). As of 22nd June 2016, we were able to buy yellow maize, yellow cassava at the premises of the NRCRI Umudike, Abia State. We expect to see NBMA imitate National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to destroy these crops at all locations they are now planted. We also expect you will move into the market to seize all Round-up pesticides and GMO seeds sold freely now.
Develop countries in Europe have been very successful at stopping Monsanto. In Britain, the campaign against GMOs is headed by Prince Charles. In Russia President Putin has declared Russia GMO crop free. China has banned GMO crops. Monsanto has tried a similar approach in many developing countries but not successfully ( http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/mexico-monsanto-maize-gmo-2014526114154374563.html ). In developing countries, like Mexico the resistance is stiff and when tests were allowed, the results were very poor. In 2013, a Mexican judge issued issued an injunction halting all experimental and commercial planting of GM maize ( http://triplecrisis.com/monsanto-meets-its-match-in-the-birthplace-of-maize/ ).
Many countries that allow GM imports permit it only for animal feed or processed foods, such as vegetable oil. Even the latter has big health problems. Health concerns abound regarding the direct consumption of transgenic food. Most recently,tests showed the presence of the herbicide glyphosate, widely used with Monsanto’s herbicide-tolerant GM soybean and maize varieties, in samples of mothers’ breast milk in the United States. Even United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) concludes that “A recent US Department of Agriculture study of the first 15 years of US experience with transgenic crops concluded that the technology had produced only limited and uneven yield improvements over conventional hybrid varieties of maize. The main benefit, when there was one, came in the reduced need for labour, since insect-resistant transgenic maize reduces pesticide applications and herbicide-tolerant varieties reduce manual weeding by allowing the liberal spraying of entire fields with Monsanto’s Round-Up weed-killer” (http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1282246/err162.pdf ).
Nigeria’s rural poverty problem, of course, has everything to do with the lack of jobs, so it was hard to see how labour-saving technology with toxic pesticides would be a boom to the poor living in rural areas.
Another study comparing USA and Europe, showed that in Europe where Monsanto MON810 GMO maize is banned, Europe out performed the United States in yields over a 30 year period ( http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14735903.2013.806408 ). So we ask you DG, which evidence did Monsanto present on increased crop yield? Monsanto and their billionaire investors has no facts, only JUNK Science! The biotechnology companies are just counting on bribery of corrupt government officials and politicians to see them through will certification of their GMO poisoned foods. We pray it will not work in Nigeria under President Buhari’s watch!
We agree that we need a open constructive and truthful dialog with the Agency and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. We the stakeholders will continue to supply you with the relevant literature on these matters. We have attached here several articles on the topic.
Signed on behalf of stakeholders by:
Academician Prof. Dr Philip C. Njemanze MD (Hons)
