Nigeria Will Achieve Food Security Through Biotechnology Adoption —AFAN President

The National President All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Architect Kabiru Ibrahim, has said that the country’s quest to achieve food security will be expedited through the adoption of biotechnology.

Ibrahim said this while speaking with journalists during the recent unveiling of Former President Goodluck Jonathan as the Goodwill Ambassador of the African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF) in Abuja.

He said the future of Nigeria’s agriculture looked great with the adoption of biotechnology following the recent high performance recorded from genetically modified crops on the field.

“Nigeria’s future with biotechnology looks very great, in fact the attainment of food security will be more ensured if we embrace biotechnology in all its ramifications.

“We just came back from a meeting in Nairobi, the quest for food security is globally an issue, you can see that the food system issue is all over. There is food price inflation everywhere; in fact even in the United States that has food security.

“So, the future of the world is better ensured if biotechnology is embraced, and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) that comes from the efforts in biotechnology, and we have Genome Editing which is coming into play and everybody is embracing it, I think it is the way to go.

“We have been associated with this and we are only talking about the good sides of it, we are not interested in those people who are propagating bad stories about it because we have been privileged to have attended very important scientific meetings where no nexus have been shown any disease and GMO or any genome edited product”, he said.

The farmer, however, commended the Open Forum on Agriculture Biotechnology (OFAB) for bringing the message of GM technology to the farmers.

Ibrahim further noted that farmers in turn were expected to be propagating the works OFAB was doing.

“Farmers are supposed to be propagating the works OFAB is doing in trying to disseminate information to the farmers that there are products that will take them out of poverty and bring food sufficiency to the country. OFAB has been doing a very good job and we are going along with everything that they are doing. Therefore, we heartily believe that we will get to prosperity through this effort”, he noted.

Furthermore, the AFAN president said Nigeria had been in the fore-front of adopting biotechnology, and had made more inroads into the deployment of the technology more than any other country in Africa.