Nigeria and the biotechnology revolution

BIOTECHNOLOGY, the practical use of biological processes in industrial production, is no more an arcane term, neither is it a new science.

Although it has been described as having its official origin in a 1980 United States of America’s Supreme Court decision that “a live human-made micro organism is patentable matter,” experts and historians alike are of the opinion that biotechnology has actually been around for a very long time now, because its early examples include the making of cheese, wine and beer, while later developments in science and technology widened its scope to include vaccine and insulin production; and also its latest globally controversial product: genetically modified organisms, GMOs, sometimes also called transgenic organisms.

It is this last manifestation of biotechnology that gave it its contemporary definition, and thus, because of the attendant hype and sensationalism, shot it to the global footing of a multilateral agenda.

Nevertheless, this field still wields an undeniable power in the fact that it continues to be the fulcrum of global socio-economic and political revolutions since it arrived on the scene in the 1980s. The growth of biotechnology is closely linked to the development in the 1970s of genetic engineering (the directed alteration of genetic material).

Substances that have been produced in this manner include human insulin, and human growth hormone. The techniques of genetic engineering – splicing, transplantation, and chemical replantation of repressed, nonfunctional genes – also offer the possibility that a number of heredity disorders may be “corrected” by manipulation.

This has led to successes in the treatment of various diseases and the popular breakthrough in the Genome Project, but also spawned heated controversies concerning the likely negative impacts of gene manipulation on human health and the environment, which is even currently raising dusts in the on-going but highly divisive field of stem-cell research.

What is more, in 1997 the religious world screamed out in alarm when the first animal was biotechnologically created in the form of a new clone-born sheep named Dolly, and when another biotech company announced its plans to clone a human being. On the same hand, developing nations around the world shouted in a uniform protest against the free-flow of GM (genetically modified) products in the world market, which made them automatic dumping grounds in this new but very lucrative trade valued at a worth of over $ 80 billion.

Western commercial ventures like Monsanto, Syngenta, Genentech, Biogen, New England Biolab, Cetus and Genex were established at the dawn of the biotechnology revolution, and continue to control the market created by this new technology. In fact, most of the bio-treatments and agro-allied chemicals we use today are supplied by them.

Now, this introduces the phase of biotechnology that is most relevant to a developing nation like Nigeria: agricultural biotechnology. In its annual report on The State of Food and Agriculture 2003-2004, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, states that it is time that developing countries start reaping the benefits of biotechnology which rich countries are currently enjoying.

Biotechnology, FAO says, holds great promise for agriculture in developing countries, adding: “Basic food crops of the poor such as cassava, potato, rice and wheat receive little attention by scientists.”

This simply means that a poor country like ours must concentrate on biotechnology based researches to improve its food and cash crops in order to eradicate hunger. To this end, simple, cheap and unsophisticated scientific methods of plant breeding and disease prevention are supposed to be introduced in agriculture in order to improve annual yields, supply better stocks for planting and make available large quantities of seedlings for farmers.

The good news is that the Federal Government of Nigeria engaged in the establishment of basic structures to achieve these goals; but the bad news is that these programmes failed to put Nigeria in the mainstream of the global biotechnology revolution. To start with, in 2001, the government set up the National Biotechnology Development Agency, NABDA, under the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, with the mandate to catalyze biotechnological methods, culture and applications in the country.

Since its inception, NABDA, in collaboration with related institutions like the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, IITA, has energetically pursued methods of making the average farmer in Nigeria feel the impact of biotechnology.

The most basic was the audacious plan to establish tissue culture plant breeding laboratories in different zones of the Federation through which much needed seedlings and cassava stems would be biotechnologically manufactured and made available to the suffering farmers of Nigeria.

But this project died a natural death because such labs can never, I repeat never, function without constant power supply.

Furthermore, in 2002, the Cross River State Government drew up an ambitious programme to produce feedstock on a large scale for its juice processing plant within the Calabar Free Trade Zone, through biotechnology. It planned to multiply 30 million pineapple suckers and deliver to the farmers in what was emerging as Nigeria’s plantation state.

A newly established indigenous biotech company took up the task with a view to supplying about two million pineapple suckers every month starting from 2004. The project was phenomenal and far-sighted, with a definite need to derive its life support from sustainable development and a government-to-government policy transfer. No doubt the State never saw the envisioned revolution as the programme was killed by another kind of power:  politics.

Today, the latest face of biotechnology is renewable energy in the form of bio-fuel. So with the way the global economy is going, very soon we are going to be one of the dumping grounds for only-petrol-consuming cars, as the whole West is now using hybrid automobiles.