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By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA- THE Federal Government, yesterday, charged the National Agricultural Seeds Council Institutional Biosafety Committee, NASC-IBC, on coming up with sustainable road-map to properly handle concerns over Genetically Modified seeds, GM-Seeds in the agricultural sector.

Buhari

This was stated in the address delivered by the Director-General, NASC, Dr Philip Ojo, while welcoming NASC-IBC to a one-day workshop held in Sheda, Abuja, with theme, ‘Institutionalising Biosafety Guidelines and Procedures for Production, Certification and Quality Control of GM Crop Seeds’.

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The thrust of the workshop is to build the capacity of various government and collaborating international organizations in handling GM-seeds according to laws regulating them and their importation, application, monitoring, unnecessary proliferation and criminal activities as far as the health of the people and environment are concerned.

Ojo said: “The National Agricultural Seed Act 72 of 1992 gives National Agricultural Seeds Council, NASC, the sole responsibility of regulating every class of seeds in Nigeria while also providing technical support for seed entrepreneurs and promoting elite varieties of crop seeds.

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On the other hand the seed law stipulates that any variety that fails to meet farmers’ expectation shall be recommended for withdrawal from circulation; this remains our charter.

“We are using this one-day meeting to kick-start deliberation on the issues at hand, sensitise and rejuvenate the NASC-IBC to stay alive to its role; and leveraging on the available platforms, we are sure the set goals will be optimally attained.

The committee is therefore called to come up with substantial and sustainable road-map to handle concerns over trade in GM-Seeds for safe handling by all stakeholders without ill-consequences to our invaluable ecosystem.