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President Goodluck Jonathan has announced that the
federal government is determined to re-establish agriculture as the
economic mainstay and put Nigerians back to work on the farm and in
areas of sustainable fisheries and pastoralism.

Mr Jonathan stated this at the third annual National
Consultation on Environment, ‘The Politics of Hunger’ in Abuja. The
president, who was represented by Ken Saro Wiwa (Jnr), his Special
Assistant on International Affairs, said that the government will
resist any attempt to introduce any unproven systems and technologies
that will have negative impacts on the people and the environment. “As
far as the way food is produced, how it is produced, has direct
relationship with the ecosystem and our safety; the task of ensuring
that it is safe, not contaminated, and not unwholesome requires all
hands to be on deck,” he said.

Polluted farms

The president also pledged his government’s continued
support to farmers and research in areas of agro-ecological agriculture
suitable to the nation’s environment and shifting away from toxic
chemicals and technologies that seek to degrade the environment. “I
will be the first to agree that environmental pollution, including
those from the oil sector has grossly impacted our capacity to produce
the foods that we need,” he said. “While oil produces national wealth,
it has paradoxically also caused human misery among our people.”

The two day environmental consultation, which had
experts within and outside Nigeria, dwelt on issues of hunger, food
aids, genetically modified crops, and philanthropic roles of capitalist
organisations.

Puppet governments

In his welcome address, Nnimmo Bassey, the Executive
Director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth
Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), noted that African countries have been open to
manipulation by international financial institutions as well as aid and
development agencies. “Such bodies draft policy directions and foist
them on African countries including Nigeria,” he said. The idea of
fighting hunger, according to him, has also become big business for the
corporations involved. “Food aid, with the connotation of philanthropy,
has become nothing short of big business and a tool for crass
manipulation and intimidation of those who are adjudged to be hungry,”
he said. “We are forever domesticating policies that are dubious to our
agriculture or poverty combating needs.”

The conference also featured the presentation of the Comrade Che
Ibeawura award, an initiative of ERA/FoEN to recognise inspiring works
of environmental activism, to 70-year-old Juliana Odey, food campaigner
for the Nigerian Cassava Growers Association. Mrs Odey, while receiving
the award and the accompanying N100,000, said that genetically
engineered cassava, which is currently undergoing a trial in Nigeria,
should be rejected in its entirety. “We are tired of GMO (genetically
modified organism) and nobody should force GMO into our throats,” she
said.