Over 80 Civil Society Organizations, farmers, researchers, and advocacy groups, have accused Nigeria’s key regulatory agencies of sending conflicting signals about the safety of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), warning that such inconsistencies threaten public health, the environment, and the nation’s food sovereignty.
The group coalition, including the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), and the GMO-Free Nigeria Alliance, said the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) have failed to produce credible, independent, and long-term studies to justify their current position that GMOs are safe for consumption.
Their criticism follows a recent statement by Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, NAFDAC’s Director-General, who declared during an interview on Channels Television on August 8, 2025, that GMOs are not harmful to human health if safety protocols are followed.
The coalition noted that this directly contradicts Adeyeye’s position in June 2024, when she told Arise News that NAFDAC did not consider GMO foods safe due to insufficient research and data, and would maintain that stance until we get very convincing data.
“Why has the DG of NAFDAC changed her mind on the safety of GMOs? Where is the rigorous, independent, and long-term research that confirms they are safe for human consumption?” the groups asked in a joint statement.
Quoting studies that link GMO consumption to liver and kidney damage, tumours, and immune disorders, the coalition accused both NAFDAC and NBMA of peddling falsehood and neglecting their duty to protect Nigerians.
According to reports from Business Day, Prof. Johnson Ekpere, an independent consultant and GMO-Free Nigeria Alliance convener, said the agencies have not shown any credible feeding studies to back their claims, citing an Iranian study where rats fed GM soybean oil suffered significant organ damage.
Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, HOMEF’s executive director, warned that the dangers of GMOs go beyond health risks, pointing to reports from Nigerian cotton farmers who say their soils no longer support conventional crops after three years of planting genetically modified Bt cotton. “Herbicide-tolerant GMOs have led to biodiversity loss and the emergence of super weeds, forcing farmers to use more toxic chemicals,” he said.
Dr. Ifeanyi Casmir, medical microbiologist, raised further alarm over Bt crops such as beans, which he said release toxins that destroy beneficial soil microorganisms and have been detected in the blood of pregnant women and fetuses.
Beyond the health and environmental concerns, the coalition stressed that GMOs threaten Nigeria’s food sovereignty.
Barr. Mariann Bassey-Olsson, an environmental rights action, warned of irreversible genetic contamination of indigenous seeds, dependence on foreign seed companies, and patent restrictions that undermine farmers’ rights to save and exchange seeds.
HOMEF’s Joyce Brown questioned whether NAFDAC and NBMA had certified the over 50 brands of processed food in Nigerian markets labelled as containing GMOs, noting that past regulatory lapses, such as the controversial approval of GM maize imports by WACOT Limited, have eroded public trust.
The coalition called on the Nigerian Senate to impose an outright ban on GMOs, protect indigenous seeds, and adopt agroecological approaches to strengthen the country’s food system.
They urged the government to tackle the root causes of food insecurity, including poor access to credit, land, and infrastructure for smallholder farmers, as well as insecurity that prevents them from cultivating their land.
