To ensure food security in Nigeria, the wife of the President, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, has been urged to lead the advocacy for banning Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the country.
A food security expert and Chief Executive Officer CEO BFA Health and Food Dr. Jackie Ikeotuonye, made this call at a media training tagged My Food is African in Abuja.
The forum was a training session for media practitioners, organized by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), focused on transforming the Nigerian-African food system towards sustainability and equipping journalists with the necessary knowledge to report on food security issues.
Addressing the challenges of Nigeria’s food system and potential solutions, Jackie Ikeotuonye emphasized the need for Nigerians to be mindful of their consumption choices.
She who emphasized that whoever controls the food controls the people criticized the adoption of GMOs in Nigeria, which had previously been deemed unsafe for human consumption by NAFDAC.
Ikeotuonye urged Senator Oluremi Tinubu to lead the advocacy for banning GMOs and praised her household farming initiative as a significant step towards addressing food insecurity.
Additionally, the coordinator of the Alliance for Action on Pesticides in Nigeria, Ikenna Donald Ofegbu, highlighted the importance of soil health and expressed concerns about the health risks associated with pesticide use in farming.
Similarly, Hauwa Mustapha, the Coordinating Director of Tubali Development Initiative, pointed out several threats to food security in Nigeria, including the high cost of fertilizers, poor harvests, banditry, land grabbing, and the lack of information available to farmers.
Panelists at the training Mariann Bassey Oruvwuje, Mike Terungwa expressed concerns that changes in the food system have affected the taste of indigenous foods. They urged Nigerians to engage in household farming to help mitigate food shortages in the country.
Earlier, the Director Programmes, Health of Mother Earth Foundation HOMEF Joyce Brown who expressed concern over the approval Tela maize said the training was central to Nigeria Food system
She observed the Nigerian government hasn’t done due diligence in form of long term risk assessments to conclude or prove the safety of GMOs and outrightly rejected the colonization of the nation’s our food system.
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