By Mike Eyibio
The Director General, National Biotechnology Development Development Agency (NABDA), Prof. Abdullahi Mustapha, has underscored that Nigeria’s population growth has inevitably placed enormous demand on land, water, forests, minerals and energy resources.
Therefore, food production through the traditional methods of farming cannot match the country’s population growth rate, he stressed.
Recall that Nigeria’s population is currently estimated to be more than 200 million.
Meanwhile, stakeholders in the country’s agricultural value chain have called on the Federal and State Governments to create an enabling environment for biotechnology to thrive in order to build, enhance the national economy for it’s citizenry.
The revelation came to the fore at the just concluded Biosafety and Biotechnology sensitisation workshop for North-central farmers and agricultural extension agents in Abuja over the weekend.
According to him, the world population will rise to 9.5 billion by 2050 and a quarter of the population will be in Africa, noting agricultural transformation in Africa requires a new approach focusing on science, technology and Innovations to increase productivity for food security, and generate surplus for trade and export.
Biotechnology, the NABDA boss said is the way to go to overcome the challenges, adding that several advancements have been made recently in Africa towards biotechnology application.
With biotechnology, he said there will be more abundant and healthy food as farmers would depend less on pesticides.
”There will be decreased production risks for farmers and high yields to feed a hungry, growing world population.” He said.
The Country Coordinator, Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB), Dr Rose Gidado tasked Nigerians and policymakers on the need to unbundle the deployment of this technology for national growth to secure popular support from the masses.
She observed that developed nations of the world took advantage of the advantages biotechnology provided by investing in technology and growing their economies.
She said the objective of the workshop, among others, was to implement a proactive communications strategy and policy and implement an outreach and awareness framework, based on evidence.
“The need for safe biotechnology application, especially in agriculture is integral in the roadmap towards achieving the set objectives of improving productivity, quality of food crops and income of farmers.
“It is therefore important to sensitise the North-central geo-political zone on the benefits of modern biotechnology practice to counter most health-related claims made by those opposed to the technology.” The Country Coordinator, stated.