Across Nigerian farms, market stalls and WhatsApp groups, one word is triggering fear, hope and fury in equal measure: Genetically Modified Organism.To some, it is the scientific answer to hunger — cowpea that yields 20 bags instead of 4, maize that survives drought and pests. To others, it is a Trojan horse — seeds we cannot save, owned by foreign corporations, planted in a country where farmers are already being killed off their land.The anxiety is no longer just about safety. It is about sovereignty. About survival.Nigeria has crossed the line from GMO sceptic to GMO adopter. We are the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop with pod-borer-resistant cowpea. TELA maize is now in our fields. Bt cotton is already on our farms. Meanwhile, hybrid tomato seedlings sell for N200,000 a bag, and seedless pawpaw is quietly replacing the trees in our compounds.But here is the fog: most of what farmers complain about is not GMO at all. It is counterfeit hybrid seed. Insecurity in Benue and Plateau has turned our food basket into a graveyard. It is a government distributing millions of bags of “improved” seed without ever explaining the difference between hybrid, certified, and genetically modified.So, what are we really sowing? Better yields? Or a new dependency?In this Bottom Line, we separate science from speculation, fact from fear, and ask the hard question: As Nigeria plants the seeds of biotechnology, are we also planting the seeds of agricultural colonialism?A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. To some, it is the scientific answer to hunger — cowpea that yields 20 bags instead of 4, maize that survives drought and pests. To others, it is a Trojan horse — seeds we cannot save, owned by foreign corporations, planted in a country where farmers are already being killed off their land.The anxiety is no longer just about safety. It is about sovereignty. About survival.Nigeria has crossed the line from GMO sceptic to GMO adopter. We are the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop with pod-borer-resistant cowpea. TELA maize is now in our fields. Bt cotton is already on our farms. Meanwhile, hybrid tomato seedlings sell for N200,000 a bag, and seedless pawpaw is quietly replacing the trees in our compounds.But here is the fog: most of what farmers complain about is not GMO at all. It is counterfeit hybrid seed. Insecurity in Benue and Plateau has turned our food basket into a graveyard. It is a government distributing millions of bags of “improved” seed without ever explaining the difference between hybrid, certified, and genetically modified.So, what are we really sowing? Better yields? Or a new dependency?In this Bottom Line, we separate science from speculation, fact from fear, and ask the hard question: As Nigeria plants the seeds of biotechnology, are we also planting the seeds of agricultural colonialism?A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The anxiety is no longer just about safety. It is about sovereignty. About survival.Nigeria has crossed the line from GMO sceptic to GMO adopter. We are the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop with pod-borer-resistant cowpea. TELA maize is now in our fields. Bt cotton is already on our farms. Meanwhile, hybrid tomato seedlings sell for N200,000 a bag, and seedless pawpaw is quietly replacing the trees in our compounds.But here is the fog: most of what farmers complain about is not GMO at all. It is counterfeit hybrid seed. Insecurity in Benue and Plateau has turned our food basket into a graveyard. It is a government distributing millions of bags of “improved” seed without ever explaining the difference between hybrid, certified, and genetically modified.So, what are we really sowing? Better yields? Or a new dependency?In this Bottom Line, we separate science from speculation, fact from fear, and ask the hard question: As Nigeria plants the seeds of biotechnology, are we also planting the seeds of agricultural colonialism?A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Nigeria has crossed the line from GMO sceptic to GMO adopter. We are the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop with pod-borer-resistant cowpea. TELA maize is now in our fields. Bt cotton is already on our farms. Meanwhile, hybrid tomato seedlings sell for N200,000 a bag, and seedless pawpaw is quietly replacing the trees in our compounds.But here is the fog: most of what farmers complain about is not GMO at all. It is counterfeit hybrid seed. Insecurity in Benue and Plateau has turned our food basket into a graveyard. It is a government distributing millions of bags of “improved” seed without ever explaining the difference between hybrid, certified, and genetically modified.So, what are we really sowing? Better yields? Or a new dependency?In this Bottom Line, we separate science from speculation, fact from fear, and ask the hard question: As Nigeria plants the seeds of biotechnology, are we also planting the seeds of agricultural colonialism?A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. But here is the fog: most of what farmers complain about is not GMO at all. It is counterfeit hybrid seed. Insecurity in Benue and Plateau has turned our food basket into a graveyard. It is a government distributing millions of bags of “improved” seed without ever explaining the difference between hybrid, certified, and genetically modified.So, what are we really sowing? Better yields? Or a new dependency?In this Bottom Line, we separate science from speculation, fact from fear, and ask the hard question: As Nigeria plants the seeds of biotechnology, are we also planting the seeds of agricultural colonialism?A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. So, what are we really sowing? Better yields? Or a new dependency?In this Bottom Line, we separate science from speculation, fact from fear, and ask the hard question: As Nigeria plants the seeds of biotechnology, are we also planting the seeds of agricultural colonialism?A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. In this Bottom Line, we separate science from speculation, fact from fear, and ask the hard question: As Nigeria plants the seeds of biotechnology, are we also planting the seeds of agricultural colonialism?A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. A GMO is a plant, microorganism or animal whose genetic makeup has been altered to express desired traits, usually for higher yields. The debate around it has spread from laboratories to beer parlours because it touches everything: what we eat, who owns our food, and who controls our future.The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The science on safety is contested, and that is the problem. In 2015, about 300 scientists, physicians and legal scholars wrote in “Environmental Sciences Europe” that there is a scarcity of independent, long-term feeding studies. They noted that much of the reassuring research comes from biotech companies themselves. Groups like the Centre for Food Safety argue that without epidemiological studies on humans, claims of total safety go beyond the evidence.But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. But other bodies disagree. In 2016, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed decades of data. They found no substantiated differences in health outcomes, including cancer and allergies, between populations that eat GM foods and those that don’t. The Genetic Literacy Project catalogued more than 280 science and health bodies worldwide, and over 3,000 peer-reviewed studies concluding that approved GM crops carry no more risk than conventionally bred crops.Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Japan’s expert panels reached the same view in 2019, and the WHO considers approved GMOs on the international market safe to eat.The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The picture, therefore, is not settled. It is an ongoing debate, and in developing countries where GMOs are making serious inroads, that uncertainty itself becomes a risk.The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The numbers proponents cite on food security are hard to ignore. In Nigeria, farmers using approved pod-borer-resistant cowpea report harvests rising from 3 or 4 bags per hectare to more than 20, with some reporting over 80 bags from 100kg of planted seed. Pesticide spraying has dropped from multiple applications to as little as one.TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. TELA maize, approved for commercial release in January 2024, has shown yield advantages of up to 10 tonnes per hectare under good practice, against a national average of 6 tonnes. Field reports from our regulators cite gains of 20 to 35 per cent under pest pressure and erratic rainfall. For a country battling inflation and import bills, that looks like food security. But yield is only half the equation. The other half is control.In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. In practice, a shopper cannot identify a GMO by looking. The old PLU code system that reserved “8” for GM produce was dropped in 2015 and never used at retail. In the U.S., packaged foods must now carry a “bioengineered” label or QR code. Organic certification excludes GMOs by law.In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. In Nigeria, the National Biosafety Management Agency Act of 2015 requires labelling, risk assessment and public engagement for any approved GM product. The job falls to NBMA and NBRDA. The question is whether that promise is being kept on the ground, in the market where most Nigerians buy food.The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The conspiracy dimension will not die. Social media keeps recycling claims of “terminator seeds” — GM seeds engineered to be sterile so farmers must buy new seed every season. The Genetic Literacy Project notes no such sterile GM seed has ever been commercially planted anywhere. Yet the claim persists, including a 2015 assertion by activist Vandana Shiva on GM mustard in India.Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Bill Gates has also been dragged in. Africa Check and Dubawa traced viral clips accusing him of using GMOs and vaccines to depopulate Africa to two speeches from 2010 and 2015 edited out of context. Academic studies of GMO discussions online find recurring clusters linking GMOs to Monsanto, to COVID-19, to vaccine misinformation.But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. But debunking conspiracies does not erase a real worry: concentration. A handful of corporations dominate the global seed market. Monsanto, now Bayer, is the biggest name. Market domination does not prove sterilisation or depopulation. It does prove power.Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Has GMO reached Nigeria? Yes, and decisively. NBMA approved Bt cotton first, then pod-borer-resistant cowpea in 2019. That made Nigeria the first African country to commercialise a GM food crop. Then came four TELA maize varieties—SAMMAZ 72T, 73T, 74T, and 75T—commercialised in January 2024. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, developed them locally under the TELA Maize Public-Private Partnership coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation.A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. A genetically engineered, late-blight-resistant potato is in regulatory field trials, with commercial release possible from 2025. GM tomato and GM rice remain in trials and are not approved for commercial planting. That distinction matters, because “tomato” is what comes up most in public anxiety.Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Globally, GM cultivation is concentrated. Five countries — the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada — account for roughly 91 per cent of the world’s GM crop area. Brazil has overtaken the U.S. in recent years. Since around 2012, developing countries collectively plant more GM area than developed ones, led by soybean, maize, cotton and canola. In Africa, South Africa leads, with Nigeria emerging as the next most active adopter. Ghana has moved far more slowly amid civil-society resistance.This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. This is where the colonialism fear enters. Beyond safety sits a Nigerian unease about a quiet inflow of new planting material. Farmers allege cereals, pawpaw, tomatoes, cassava stems and citrus arrive through commercial and donor channels. To be clear: apart from TELA maize, none of these, as commonly sold to smallholders, are approved GM varieties. What most farmers encounter are hybrids — F1 products of conventional cross-breeding, not genetic engineering. The distinction matters for diagnosis, even if the anxiety about dependency is real.Related NewsLate arrival of subsidised fertiliserFoundation moves to boost maize farming in KanoFoundation trains dealers on maize production, food securityThe complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The complaint is simple and agronomic: seed saved from a hybrid tomato, maize or cassava harvest performs poorly or fails when replanted. Hybrid seed is bred to concentrate traits in the first generation. Saved seed separates in the second, losing vigour. Companies therefore advise buying fresh seed each season.Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Worse, experts warn of substandard or counterfeit seed sold as certified. Professor Lateef Sanni of FUNAAB says such seed damages root formation and canopy. Professor Samuel Olakojo of IAR&T notes many farmers still plant ordinary grain that has lost genetic potential through repeated reuse, depressing yields well below the 2 tonnes per hectare Nigerian maize could deliver.Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Whether the seed is a genuine hybrid or fake, the effect is the same: farmers must return to a supplier every season, at a price they do not control. In 2026, a handful of tomato seedlings sold for as high as ₦200,000 in some areas, with no guarantee of yield.Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Civil-society voices call this modern imperialism. Duke Tagoe of Food Sovereignty Ghana argues seeds entering African markets remain the property of foreign corporations, not African entities. A recent scholarly paper describes the adoption of hybrid and GM systems as “agro-epistemicide”—the erosion of indigenous seed-saving knowledge in favour of perpetual dependency. It echoes colonial patterns in which imported systems displaced local ones in the name of modernisation.Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Regulators push back. An NBRDA-backed op-ed argues Nigeria’s approved GM crops were developed substantially by Nigerian scientists at ABU under domestic biosafety oversight. That, they say, is capacity-building, not imposition.I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. I saw the dilemma in a pawpaw. After receiving one as a gift, I cut it open to find no seeds at all. Beyond taste, the question was harder: how does pawpaw renew itself in Nigeria if seedless varieties displace the seed-bearing trees in our compounds? The donor had urged uprooting existing trees for the new variety, chasing immediate gain at the expense of long-term reproduction. Many Nigerians, unknowingly, have become distributors of such non-regenerating varieties through acts of goodwill.Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Tomato growers add another complaint: imported and hybrid varieties bred for other climates underperform on Nigerian soil without heavy fertiliser, amendments or irrigation. Extension guides already advise soil testing before planting such varieties. The complaint is genuine, even if it reflects ordinary breeding trade-offs rather than sabotage.Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Where is government in all this? Not absent. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, through the National Agricultural Seeds Council, flagged off a Renewed Hope Seed Support Programme that delivered 46 metric tonnes of certified seed to 4,600 farmers in Zamfara in 2026. The Bank of Agriculture reported distributing 1.8 million bags of fertiliser and 329,000 bags of high-yielding seed to nearly 500,000 farmers in over 20 states. The Federal Government also flagged off the distribution of one million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings nationwide in mid-2026 through CRIN. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation runs seed-exchange schemes in Yobe.Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Officials describe this as productivity and food security. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, says the 2025–2026 allocation of more than 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture, plus these interventions, has helped moderate food inflation.What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. What is missing is public education. No sustained campaign has explained the difference between certified seed, hybrid seed, and GM seed. That gap is where fear grows.And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. And the fear is fertilised by blood. According to Nigeria Watch, at least 12,954 Nigerians were killed in violence-related incidents in 2025, with 5,272 more between January and May 2026 — over 18,000 in 17 months. The Global Terrorism Index recorded a 46 per cent increase in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, and incidents rose from about 120 to 171.The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The food-producing states bear the brunt. More than 2,200 people were killed in Plateau between 2023 and early 2026. More than 3,600 were killed in Benue in the same period. Amnesty International documented at least 2,600 deaths across 135 attacks on 50 communities in both states between January 2023 and February 2024. Over 500,000 have been displaced. The June 2025 attack on Yelwata in Benue killed more than 100. In the middle of the 2026 planting season, fresh attacks killed over 40 farmers in a month and closed village markets.Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Livestock theft and grazing violence have compounded this across Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger, displacing an estimated one million people. On 26 November 2025, the President declared a national security emergency after attacks in Kwara, Kebbi and Niger in which over 350 people were abducted.Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Is it coordinated? The Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, calls the Benue attacks a calculated invasion and land-grab. Emeka Umeagbalasi of Intersociety alleges government inaction reflects complicity in a religious domination agenda. Whether or not that is true, the result is the same: land is being emptied, and with it, our capacity to feed ourselves.So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. So what should be done? For government: invest as much in public understanding as in biosafety science. Run a plain-language campaign separating certified, hybrid and GM seed. Equip NASC to crack down on counterfeit seed, which breeders already flag as a major driver of crop failure. Protect farmers with the same urgency as other critical infrastructure, especially in Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Katsina and Kebbi during planting and harvest. Build community and national seed banks to preserve open-pollinated and indigenous varieties that farmers can save and replant. Give them an alternative to total commercial dependency.For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. For farmers and associations: organise collective seed verification and bulk purchase to reduce exposure to fakes. Press NASC for redress when certified seed fails. Expand cooperative seed banks like the Yobe pilot—demand in writing the origin, performance and replanting status of any new variety before accepting it.For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. For the public and media: treat GMO claims like any extraordinary claim. Check NBMA and NBRDA before sharing. Journalists must unpack corporate dependency, weak regulation and the link between insecurity and food. Investigate, constantly.Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Nigeria’s seed anxiety is not irrational. Parts of it are misdirected, but the core is real. We have adopted GMOs, with locally developed varieties showing documented yield gains. What has not kept pace is public literacy about what a GMO actually is, and how it differs from hybrid and often substandard seed that traps farmers in cycles of costly repurchase.Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. Layered onto that is a food-belt security crisis that is real, escalating and data-backed. When farmers are killed off their land, it does not matter whether the seed is GM or hybrid. The harvest will not come.We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. We are at a crossroads. We can plant biotechnology and call it progress. Or we can plant it without sovereignty, without security, without knowledge — and call it survival.The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. The seeds we plant today will determine what Nigeria eats tomorrow. The question is not just whether they will grow. It is: who will own them when they do?And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance. And if we do not answer that now, we may wake up to find that while we were debating GMOs, we lost the most important seed of all — the seed of self-reliance.