Tag Archives: biotechnology

The National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) has approached various security agencies including the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) as well as the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) as part of operational arrangements to enforce its mandate. It will be recalled that the NBMA shortly after its establishment gave a deadline of six months which expired last December to all ...

Federal regulators last Thursday in the US approved a genetically engineered salmon as fit for consumption, making it the first genetically altered animal to be cleared for American supermarkets and dinner tables. The approval by the Food and Drug Administration caps a long struggle for AquaBounty Technologies, a small company that first approached the F.D.A. about approval in the 1990s. The agency made ...

The Federal Government’s determination to diversify the economy as a result of the challenges in the oil sector has set it to develop immutable strategies that would ensure the creation of no fewer than 25,000 jobs annually from the biotechnology sector. A statement by the Director-General of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NABMA), Mr. Rufus Ebegba, issued on Tuesday said modern ...

Public support is crucial if any technology is to be accepted and adopted by those who stand to benefit from it, including modern biotechnology which is relatively new in Nigeria.  Etta Michael Bisong, an environmental journalist based in Abuja, writes on the role of the media in strengthening modern biotechnology practices to provide alternative sources of livelihoods in Nigeria. Many Nigerians ...

Rufus Ebegba, Director-General and CEO of the the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), stresses that the recently passed Biosafety Act not only ensures biosafety in the country, but is a safety valve for harnessing the potentials of modern biotechnology safely The development of a national biosafety regulatory framework for Nigeria dates back to 1994 when the first National Biosafety Guidelines ...

Director General/CEO, National Biotechnology Development Agency, Professor Lucy Ogbadu, insists that Biotechnology has been used for more than two decades without a single, documented safety concern, and that Nigeria cannot afford to be left out in the global agricultural biotechnology revolution Nigerian scientists in the field of Biosciences at this particular time in our history are delighted that their nation ...

A group of 11 award-winning experts working across Africa has appealed to governments of the African Union to develop ecological organic agriculture on the continent. The laureates of the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, who met recently in Cairo in Egypt, signed a joint appeal calling on the African Union Commission and its NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA), to implement their roadmap ...

Opposition has emerged from within the National Conference over the prospects of the Biosafety Bill, which is presently awaiting Presidential endorsement to become law. The Science, Technology and Development Committee of the confab in its report presented to the floor had on Page 34 urged President Goodluck Jonathan to speedily act on the proposal. But a member of the Environment ...

“Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morning till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. (…) Ever trusting in the ...

African governments have been accused of being complacent about the “covert” activities of the biotechnology industry to undermine food sovereignty on the continent. According to participants at a workshop held in Abuja, the policy frameworks for biotechnology in most African countries are either non-existent, weak or subject to manipulation by multinational corporations promoting genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), and acting in alliance ...