The National Agricultural Seed Council says the Plant Variety Protection (PVP) act just passed by President Muhammadu Buhari will boost the country’s food security drive and seed investor’s confidence in the Nigerian seed market.
The Plant Variety Protection Act provides legal intellectual property rights protection to breeders of new varieties of plants.
It makes a new breeder develop a new variety of a particular plant that is drought or flood resistant for the Nigerian market, and what the new act does is to protect the breeders right to that variety ensuring that it is not unlawfully copied or duplicated.
Indiscriminately duplicated
This act would attract seed investors into the country knowing that their plant varieties won’t be indiscriminately duplicated and disseminated which could lead to loss of investment.
It would also boost farmer’s yields and income as farmers would have access to high yielding varieties of seeds by breeders that would flood the country with different hybrid plant varieties that are suitable for the Nigerian climate.
Speaking at a media briefing in Abuja Nigeria’s capital, the Director General of the Council Dr. Philip Ojo the PVP act would transform the fortune of the Nigerian agriculture sector in the nearest future as it would expose farmers to exactly what they need in terms of seeds.
“This law will bring out clearly going forward the contribution of plant breeding to the Nigerian agricultural sector. We will begin to see on our farmer’s field superior yielding, stress tolerant, disease resistant, climate smart and input efficient varieties which will be introduced by innovative breeders both from the public and the private sector in few years to come”
On the implementation of the law, Dr. Ojo said they worked hard to push for the bill to be passed into law but now it would work to ensure that the law is implemented to the latter.
He stated that a PVP office would be set up that would handle everything concerning PVP laws from any part of the world.
“We have already started doing what is necessary to ensure that we do not only have the PVP Law but we would implement it for the expected dividends to be delivered to the farmers and the entire Nigerians. We have already commence actions to set up a functional PVP office that will be capable to receive and process applications for the granting of a PVP Law in Nigeria from anywhere in the world”
“We are also working to develop supporting regulations that will help implement the Act and will continue to collaborate with partners both locally and internationally to ensure that we complete the process very soon of becoming a full member of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV)” he added
Dr. Ojo thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for assenting to the bill while also appreciating the leadership of the National Assembly, the Minister of Agriculture, the leadership of the Seed Industry, Board members of the NASC, AGRA, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
The President also appreciated Rockefeller Foundation, Department for International Development (DFID), BMZ Germany and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for their support to the Council.
Lateefah Ibrahim
