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Prof. Egesi spoke with Food Farm News on what the Association has achieved within a short period of the executives’ appointment at Ibadan last month.
Egesi said
he would bear his world plant breeding experiences into giving a solid
foundation for the association, stressed that the coming together of the
members under a formidable pressure group would enhanced the development of the
plants’ breeding to enhancing food security through proactive role that would
ensure signing an Act for the intellectual property right in Nigeria.
He commended
the effort of the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) and other affiliated
agencies that have been pursuing the bill to become an Act presently at National
Assembly, saying that his association is now ready to lend their voices in
order to achieve the purpose.
According to
him ‘’ We will now have voice as a group to speak on Intellectual property
right act, as there is no act as regards it presently. But luckily NASC and
others have been helping us to pursue a bill at the National Assembly that will
ensure an Act for the intellectual property right. Before now we have been
attending this hearing based on individual invitations, but with the coming on
board as an Association, that has automatically stopped as we will now be
attending as a group with one voice. And our voice must count to make the act
stronger through our contributions that will ensure national development on the
matter’’
He promised
also that more capacity would be built for members especially the younger
breeders just as female genders would be encouraged to join the profession, so
as to be able to tap more into their ingenuity in plant breeding and
commercialization to the betterment of the entire country.
Speaking on
the experience within a short period of becoming the president he said that ‘’ by
tomorrow i will just be a week old as the president of the association. So i may not have much to tell you about the experience
we have had, but as a plant breeder in Nigeria for the past 19-20 years, we
have been everywhere, but only that we have not been able to organize ourselves
into an association before now. But we know ourselves from departments and colleges
of agriculture as we always meet in meetings like this one, but we have never
got ourselves together. We have always
been joining ourselves with other Associations like Biotechnology Society of
Nigeria and Genetic society of Nigeria, and nobody has ever thought of
consolidating us into an organized association like others until October 2019
when we went for Africa Plant Breeders Association inaugural meeting held at
University of Ghana, Accra. It was our friends and colleagues we have been
meeting across the world, but mostly Africans that encourage us to form the
group. It was a huge meeting with huge success as we saw the advantages we
stand to gain as an association. There
were many Nigerian breeders including some students at the meeting. So right there and then, we took a census of
over a hundred Nigerians who attended the meeting and therefore promised to
start organizing ourselves into an Association. So we return back with the list,
and start galvanizing for more members.
We have done a lot of things like constitution drafting, adoption of it
and formation of an electoral committee and people were asked to indicate
interest. A lot of people reached out to me and said they want a dynamic and vibrant
person like me. I didn’t even know i met those requirement but they felt i
could do it. I thought about it and accepted it as an opportunity to organize ourselves
by laying a solid foundation for the association. So i put out a nomination paper, some people
nominated me and i accepted and we went and i won the presidency in a contested
election. Already we have grown from initial 150 members from Ghana meeting to
over 350 members within this short period as a new association’’
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