A visiting assistant professor at the D.B. Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Dr. Bridget Aito-Bobadoye, has advised the the Nigerian government to implement policies on re-emerging invasive pests in the country.
Aito-Bobadoye described biosecurity as the prevention of disease-causing agents entering or leaving any place where they can pose a risk to farm animals, humans, or the safety and quality of a food product.
The don also called on African countries to implement a harmonised bio-security act.
She urged the 54 African nations to adopt new regulatory frameworks on bio-security policies, where forests in Africa can be safeguarded to prevent the proliferation of invasive pests which can negatively impact forest ecosystems.
She observed that developing a national bio-security framework will scale up preparedness against sporadic pest outbreaks within the Nigeria’s borders.
Aito-Bobadoye, who is also a principal research fellow at the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, emphasised the need to ensure that emerging or re-emerging invasive insect pests and pathogens are stopped before entering borders, new forest ecosystems, or countries.
“This will help protect human, animal, and environmental health and secure food safety. Forests in Africa are becoming fragmented at an alarming rate and this is causing huge ecological imbalances.
Insect pest invasions and outbreaks are becoming more frequent with more severity which is exasperated by climate change,” she said.
The don who pointed out that this has led to an increase in bio-security threats which come in various forms such as insect pests and infectious pathogens,” added that this can endanger food security, impact human or animal health and even cripple national economies.”
Aito-Bobadoye pointed out that Nigeria has extremely porous borders which make surveillance and detection of bio-security threats extremely challenging.
This, she said, is because the movements of goods such as unprocessed wood products, firewood, and lumber through popular trade routes are unregulated.
The don also noted that most African countries have weak regulatory policies that can stop the proliferation of these insect pests and pathogens, recommending a regional bio-security act as the solution to implementing emergency pest response programme across the continent.
