Rose Gidado, Nigeria’s GMO Regulator and TELA Maize Advocate, Defends Safety – ‘We Won’t Poison Our Own People’

Rose Gidado, Director at the Department of Agricultural Biotechnology of the National Biotechnology Research and Development Agency (NBRDA), has recently insisted that the introduction of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and their products, such as the Bill-Gates-funded TELA Maize now spreading across Nigeria’s markets and farmlands—are not intended to poison citizens but rather to strengthen food security and improve nutrition.

Gidado, who also serves as Nigeria’s GMO regulator at the NBRDA and doubles as the Nigerian Country Coordinator for the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) in Africa, made this known in Abuja during a sensitisation workshop on Wednesday.

The workshop, organised by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in collaboration with OFAB, was described as a platform to “enhance understanding of biotechnology” and its role in Nigeria’s food security. However, it soon took the form of a sensitisation exercise, where Gidado stressed that “the perception that GMOs were harmful or poisonous was misleading and unfounded.”

We cannot give poison to our own people,” Gidado asserted, adding, “Many of us, and the professors working in this field, are Nigerians, responsible scientists who are also consumers.”

She further claimed that “safety is never compromised,” citing the establishment of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) to “regulate biotechnology practices in the country”.

Contradictions

Despite these assurances, contradictions remain. In July 2024, West Africa Weekly filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 2015) asking the NBMA to provide the risk assessment it conducted to determine the safety of TELA Maize. The agency failed to respond, thereby violating FOIA provisions and withholding any documented safety assessment of the GMO product.

Contrary to Gidado’s “safety” and “non-poisonous” assessment of GMOs and their byproducts, Prof. Emmanuel Kwon-Ndung of the Federal University, Lafia, reportedly acknowledged that “some resistance to or lack of trust in GMOs stemmed from scientists themselves, but it was often not based on scientific evidence.”

Much of the opposition is rooted in political, ethical, or social concerns. We need to keep communicating the science to dispel these misconceptions,” he added.

It is, however, worth noting that the health and environmental risks associated with GMOs are self-evident in over 60,000 lawsuits filed against Monsanto (now Bayer) in relation to its glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup, a controversial product to which it had settled nearly 100,000 lawsuits and paid around $11 billion to applicants who sued it for claims linking its products to cancer.

In addition to this, in 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organisation, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” that is, it has the potential to cause cancer.

Meanwhile, Gidado, who, as a regulator in the biotechnology space, is expected to maintain public trust in the regulation and labelling of GMO products, now promotes GMOs as a “solution” to increase farm yields, reduce losses, and as an adaptation to climate-related issues. In reality, however, low food output in Nigeria is primarily caused by insecurity targeting farmers in food-producing states across the country.

About The Author

Mayowa Durosinmi

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M. Durosinmi is a West Africa Weekly investigative reporter covering Politics, Human Rights, Health, and Security in West Africa and the Sahel Region

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