Over the years, the world has witnessed a series of revolutions that changed the way people lived, behaved and did things.

Africa and Nigeria in particular, missed out of the previous revolutions, including the famous industrial revolution, which marked a major turning-point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way. Most notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. In the two centuries following 1800, the world’s average per capita income increased over 10-fold, while the world’s population increased over 6-fold.
Nobel laureate Robert E. Lucas, Jr notes of the industrial revolution that: “For the first time in history, the living standards of the ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behaviour has happened before.”
Prof. Bamidele Solomon, former director general of the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), said recently that: “Nigeria missed out of the industrial revolution principally because we lacked the basic human capacity to actively participate in the revolution but currently, the country has the needed manpower, education and facilities to partake in the biotechnology revolution which is blowing across the world.”
The federal government established NABDA as an agency to champion the deployment of biotechnology in the country.  And in the last 14 years, NABDA has prepared the grounds as well as facilitated the training of a critical mass of experts to ensure that the technology was deployed in a safe and guided manner. Today various institutions of higher learning are seriously involved in various forms of research in all aspects of biotechnology, including genetic modification and tissue culture.
The establishment of the biotechnology agency was not viewed as problematic, but providing a platform for Nigerians to enjoy the dividend of this technology has witnessed more opposition than even the use of unauthorised vaccine for the treatment of Ebola virus disease.
This underscores the need to understand what biotechnology entails. Dr. Shehu Umaru, says biotechnology is the controlled and deliberate manipulation of biological systems for the efficient improvement or manufacture of useful products. So what is the noise about genetic modification which has the target of improving existing crop or animal species?
Currently, Nigeria is only involved in two known and approved genetic modification research of two staple food crops - cowpea otherwise known as beans, and cassava. Both researches are currently undergoing confined trials at the Institute for Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, and the National Root Crop Research Institute, Umudike, Imo State, respectively.
It is important to establish what informed the research into this two staple crop.
The Cowpea Productivity Improvement Project is an agricultural biotechnology (agbiotech) public-private partnership (PPP) that emerged from the recognition of the damage the Maruca pest was doing to cowpea varieties in Africa. This project is the result of a network of individuals and organisations that are committed to working together to advance the conventional cowpea seed.
Over 70 percent of farmers in northern Nigeria cultivate beans which is a staple food and a rich source of proteins for millions of poor Nigerians. But, the continuous cultivation of this rich and affordable source of proteins is being threatened by pest infestation and all efforts to rid the crop of these pests have failed, leaving fumigation as the probable option for farmers.
According to a publication by Obidimma C. Ezezika and Abdallah S. Daar in the Agriculture and Food Security Journal, cowpea is the most important indigenous African legume because of its ability to grow in drought-prone areas and improve soil fertility. It is the favoured crop of small-scale, low-income farmers in Africa. It is also a high-protein; low-cost staple food and important cash crop for farmers.
In 2009, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, reported that approximately 7.56 million tonnes of cowpea were produced globally. Nigeria is the largest producer and consumer of cowpea in the world, accounting for approximately five million of the 12.76 million total hectares of land devoted to cowpea growth.
The enormous demand for cowpeas in Nigeria has made it the world’s largest cowpea importer since 2004. However, cowpea is affected by a number of environmental stressors. The cowpea pod borer (Maruca vitrata) is particularly detrimental. Reports have shown that severe infestations of Maruca can cause crop yield losses of as high as 70-8o percent. Insecticides against Maruca exist but have not been widely adopted by farmers due to prohibitive costs and significant health hazards. Overall, insecticides have proven ineffective in combating Maruca.
The principal investigator for the BT Cowpea project and a plant breeder at the Institute of Agricultural Research, ABU, Prof. Mohammed Faguji Ishiyaku, said recently that the decision to go into the BT cowpea project was to first and foremost ensure that farmers get results from their daily toll, increase their income and secondly, eradicate the challenges of Maruca, which had made most of the cowpea farmers to down tools.
Ishiyaku also said there was no need for Nigerians to entertain fears on Genetically Modified (GM) crops, stressing that: “If BT engineered maize, soya beans are being consumed in different parts of the world and nothing bad happened to the people, it shows that the crops are safe for consumption, except we are saying that Nigerians are lesser human beings, which we are not.”
In Umudike, the rows of leafy green cassava plants growing at a confined field trial site are the result of millions of dollars in funding, years of research, and a collaboration that spans continents. For some, these GM plants promise an agricultural revolution that could eliminate hunger and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Cassava is the most important food crop in sub-Saharan Africa,” declared Dr. Claude Fauquet of the Danforth Plant Science Centre in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Where other crops fail, this sweet potato-like vegetable thrives. It resists drought, grows in poor soil, repels herbivores with its cyanide-laden leaves, and requires minimal labour to plant. Cassava can be left in the ground for up to three years and removed whenever needed. Not surprisingly, at least 100 countries worldwide count on cassava as a staple food.
However, the 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who rely on the plant as their major source of calories are prone to malnutrition. The starchy vegetable has the lowest protein-to-energy ratio of any staple crop and lacks adequate levels of vitamins A and E, iron and zinc.
Some varieties do contain in abundance compounds that can cause cyanide poisoning when eaten. Cassava’s susceptibility to devastating viral diseases also jeopardises its status as a food security crop. Recently, the cassava mosaic virus and brown streak disease have ravaged harvests in East and Central Africa, reducing yields by as much as 50 million tonnes each year.
But these challenges threatening the ability of cassava as a food security crop according to experts can be fixed by genetic engineering.
In Nigeria, the GM cassava aims to raise cassava’s levels of iron, protein, and vitamin A to provide the complete minimum daily dietary requirements for these nutrients in a cassava-based diet and to also develop cassava plants resistant to cassava mosaic virus and brown streak disease by using genes from the viruses themselves.
Virus Resistant Cassava for Africa had predicted terrible instability for Nigeria’s population of 155 million should brown streak disease spread to this very cassava-dependent area.
The introduction of genetic engineering or GM into staples in Nigeria is to ensure a healthy environment so that farmers won’t depend more on chemicals which in the long run affect humans and the environment. It will also step up the nutrition level of the average Nigeria. None of the research handled by scientists who are Nigerians takes less than 10 years so what are we afraid of?