He is a prolife activist and a scientist of international acclaim. Dr. Philip Njemanze is the Chairman of the International Institute of Advanced Research and Training. He is an academician of the International Academy of Aeronautics, the highest UNESCO body for space scientists. In this interview in Owerri, Njemanze raises alarm on the conspiracy and looming danger around public health and Nigeria’s food security, following the recent ban of Nigerian food crops by officials of the European Union. Excerpt:http://crimefacts.org/why-fg-must-arrest-adesina-now-ban-gmo-products-njemanze/

Obviously sponsored words even if there might be some iota of truth in it..

Finally someone with an understanding of the shadow politics and danger Nigerian consumers have been exposed to.

Please lets join together and push out Monsanto and other Big Agro 'ASSASSIN' companies in Nigeria. Cancer is real.

What is your take on the recent ban of Nigerian food crops by EU?

A costly error has been committed, in that the agricultural transformation should have been a way of uplifting the poor peasant farmers in Nigeria and also securing our food supply. It would have been an avenue to make our products which are natural products without Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) contamination premium export commodities. They would have easily formed the bulk of organic food products in the West which are very expensive in the global market and a viable foreign exchange earner for our farmers. This would have lifted our rural communities from poverty.

What in your view led to the ban?

It is simply the infiltration of our agricultural sector by persons and companies with ulterior motives packaged as humanitarian support to a developing economy. That is why an unacceptable dose of pesticide was found in food crops from Nigeria, a development that is alien to our agricultural practices. One of the most toxic pesticides found is Dichlorovox. The normal acceptable maximum quantity in crops is 0.01mg/kg. They one found in the Nigerian export crop by EU officials is 0.46mg/kg which is 46 times more than what can be safely consumed by human beings. By implication, what has been going on illegally in secrecy is that the produce from Nigeria is being stuffed with very toxic pesticide and being released into Nigerian market and now into foreign market by some GMO companies driven away from Europe and America but given refuge in Nigeria. In fact, these products do not even have NAFDAC approval. The Director of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition of NAFDAC, Mrs. Ogochukwu Mainasara had already indicated that whatever they were doing was not approved or endorsed by any Nigerian law on food safety. So what the agricultural transformation agenda did through the former Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina was to give a red carpet reception to GMO producing companies in Europe and America, the likes of Monsanto, to come into Nigeria and bring in products which are unsafe for human consumption. Now Europe has rejected our food crops because they must test what their people would consume, but who is testing the food product going into the Nigerian market? So Nigerians are being force-fed with poison. This is outrageous and treasonable. This was a danger we saw coming and under the Global Prolife Alliance, we warned about this and petitioned the National Executive Council and the National Assembly.

A report said the pesticide contamination was during preparation for export. What do you think?

The entire process of producing GMO crops; right from cultivation, growth, preservation and down to export require pesticides to sustain the process. So it is not just a matter of export preservation, it is a far reaching contamination which EU was not prepared to risk. Is Nigeria prepared to risk it? It is indeed a strange and terrible practice going on here but ironically, the United States Department of Agriculture states very clearly and this document is available on the internet, that Genetically Modified Seeds do not increase crop yield or improve crop quality.[/b]It virtually does the reverse. [b]So Nigeria has nothing to gain from genetically modified food (GMO), all we are going to gain is a polluted environment and a compromised food chain forcing Nigeria to depend on some of these Americans biotechnological companies to supply food to us.

You said actions of some key players in our agro industry are treasonable. How?

Let me put this in perspective so you can figure out the conspiracy against Nigeria. Knowingly or unknowingly, former President Goodluck Jonathan in an act which is actually illegal appointed a foreign citizen, Bill Gates as Eminent Special Adviser on Agriculture. Then I asked; on what ground? It is not that Gates has any technocratic knowledge on agriculture. So what happened was that a foreign citizen was appointed Adviser supervising the Ministry of Agriculture, and he found his protégé and made him Minister of Agriculture with an agenda in mind; to use the Federal Ministry of agriculture to promote GMO products from his own company called Monsanto which is globally known for producing genetically modified seeds and agricultural products. It must be noted at this point that before being appointed as Agriculture Minister, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina was working for Bill Gates as a Deputy Director in an enterprise known as Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) which primary objective was to advance the acceptance of GMO products in African countries. This is a massive corruption ring and a treasonable conspiracy involving Adesina, Bill Gates, Monsanto and the Federal Government. This is a crime against the Federal Republic of Nigeria; putting the lives of millions of Nigerians at risk. Honestly, some of these foreign agribusinesses have reduced us to being the guinea pig for their questionable projects. And Adesina and his collaborators have succeeded in nailing the coffin of agricultural transformation in Nigeria.

But Senate President Bukola Saraki condemned the ban by EU?

The Senate President is wrong to say EU should not have banned
our products. EU officials showed that they were responsible officials; with an obligation to protect their people. Let the Nigerian National Assembly show the same by setting up a Senate probe committee to investigate the agricultural transformation program; the role of Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Bill Gates and everyone involved in the conspiracy against Nigeria. This must include a public hearing by the National Assembly. For safety sake, the entire agricultural transformation program must be put on trial.

What is the bottom line here?

Bringing questionable international agribusinesses into Nigeria is an
extermination plot against Nigerians. We will experience very high toxicity levels in our farms and food crops and this is very dangerous to health. No nation in their right mind should ever embrace GMO food crops in preference to organic food crops. The bottom line is that we do not need Bill Gates and his Monsanto GMO seeds and products to transform our agriculture. When Nigeria was first in cocoa, groundnut and palm oil, we did not have any genetically modified planting materials. Our millet, sorghum, groundnut, cocoa and oil palm were not genetically modified and they flourished and we were first in the world. And our economy was driven by agriculture at the time, so why do we need it now? Somebody or a sinister group somehow succeeded in blind folding our leaders, and working to keep our country dependent on GMO companies, and by so doing compromising our food security. We can still salvage the situation before it gets out of hand.

What response do you expect of Nigerian leaders?

The Senate president by now should be looking at putting Gates and Adesina on trial, he should be announcing a committee to probe into that. We are saying Adesina should be brought back to answer questions on what he knows about the introduction of GMOs into our food market. This is not just corruption in the agricultural sector but a corruption that has put the national security of Nigeria at risk.

What legislative protection do Nigerians have?

None! The last National Assembly was so tied up with frivolities that obnoxious articles were sneaked into bills that should have protected Nigerians. This is largely why the 7th Assembly of the National Assembly was a national disgrace. And it is a shame to have many of them still seating in the senate. In the case of the Bio-Safety Law they passed, the crime committed against Nigeria rose to the level of treason. Many experts in this area of agriculture and food safety pushed a law designed by African Heads of State and their experts called it the African Model Law on Bio-Safety. This law is patented as the Cartegena Protocol. Signed by over 190 countries, this protocol was designed to protect Africans from the adverse consequences of GMOs. The African Heads of State came together and resolved to make it even more stringent and they drafted and signed a law in which Nigeria participated since 2003. When they came to pass the so called Bio-Safety law in the last senate, all the safety measures in the African Model Law on Bio-Safety were missing. The original document was doctored and what was produced and called Bio-Safety Law was designed more to give advantage to GMO companies. Can you imagine a situation where all the safeguards required before putting a GMO product in circulation in Nigeria is to just publish the product in a national daily and after 670 days, it is considered accepted and as such it is approved for circulation and consumption? No institute will examine it, not even NAFDAC will be compelled to look at the food safety before it is brought into the market. What you get under this circumstance, is food toxicity. And this is because we have a corrupt system that is self-preserving. This was the disgrace of the 7th Assembly.

What would you recommend to FG?

The Federal Government must begin to see through the deception and as a matter of urgency, expel all biotechnological companies in Nigeria and their products; because what is happening is total deception. I can give you an example. Bill Gates came to Nigeria with the yellow cassava which he claimed contained Protein and vitamin-A. The claim was published by Bill Gates Foundation in Senator Danforth Institute, in which they claimed to have found a Zaolin gene implying that protein is present or can be present in cassava. That provoked the curiosity of every scientist in the world such that every scientist wanted to replicate the work for themselves and nobody found any protein in cassava. The institute was queried and the reputable journal where it was published, Plox One, now mandated them to find out where the flawed data came from, only to find out that some people sat in the laboratory and forged all the data. The institute immediately proceeded to retract the work and declare it a scientific falsehood. It is still like that in the Plox One website. And Gates still came to tell African Heads of state who embraced him, and that includes Nigeria and Ghana, that the cassava is nutritious. What they now claimed thereafter is that it contains Vitamin-A. Today everybody is shouting Vitamin-A cassava but that too is fraudulent in a way. Let me explain. For you to get the equivalent of the Vitamin-A in two pieces of small carrots from the so-called yellow cassava, you will need to eat one full bag of garri in one sitting, which is impossible. That is how useless the Vitamin-A cassava claim is. What Gates wants is to be the sole supplier of one our major staple food crops in Nigeria, the largest black nation in the world. There is nothing humanitarian to it. It is just a ruthless business venture of no quality value to Nigeria. Unfortunately, Gates is using notable institutions like the National Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, both of which are beneficiaries of generous grants from Gates, to distribute this cassava that is not even certified by the relevant agencies in Nigeria as safe. These are constitutional breaches, national security breaches and health breaches that can only be fully revealed when a tribunal is inaugurated to probe this matter.

Hope its not the tme cassava stems that Is gaining ground now ?If so it should be stopped immediately.

It's been a long time I read views of people who read post before commenting. Good we've found our reading glasses.

This is serious

Very serious. I knew how whites hate mosanto, but I never knew bill gate was connected to it. This thread need to be alive.

This is an informative piece lying fallow in this dungeon while boobs bearing thrash is in public domain! Please this interview is educating enough to grace FP ooooo.

This man is on point and has diligently and exploratively done justice to analysing the danger inherent in GMO planting materials; so his view deserve to be hear by all!

This is serious, if the FG is serious about agriculture as they claim, then this issue needs to be investigated by the 8th assembly.