The Dangers Of Some Common Foods In Nigeria

By Dr. Abayọ̀mì Ògùntoye

I promised to write about what is killing people in Nigeria today. Nigerians should be focused on solving these problems instead of fighting over GMO which they don’t understand yet. These are what is causing most of the cancer going around now:

1. Ripening agent for banana and plantain. Because people are in hurry to harvest their bananas and plantains. they spray them with Calcium carbide. This is a ripening agent and makes the plantain ripen very quickly. It is extremely hazardous to the human body as it contains traces of arsenic and phosphorus.

So anytime you buy ripe plantain in the market chances are you are buying plantain ripened with Calcium carbide.

Solution:

Buy unripe Plantains and Banana and keep them inside a black plastic for few days, it will ripen naturally.

2. Most Nigerian farmers, if not all of them use a chemical called “Sniper” as an added ingredient for pest control. Sniper is potent and it scares me. It is a DDVP, 2,2-Dichlorovinyl dimethyl phosphate compound. It is an organophosphate that readily binds to the lungs and kidney causing cancer. It is almost in everything you eat in Nigeria.

Solution:

You are on your own here because it is everywhere.

3. Weevil control in Beans with Aluminum phosphide (AlP). This is the most dangerous food pollution in Nigeria. Because weevils can destroy the entire year’s harvest of the farmer in a few days. They drop tablets of Aluminum Phosphide inside each bag of beans.

They think that one tablet is enough to drive weevils away from the bag of beans. Yes they are right, but that one tablet can drive weevils away from an entire Silo of 50 tons of beans. Do the math yourselves.

Unfortunately, it is now one of the most common causes of food poisoning in Nigeria. It liberates lethal phosphine gas when it comes in contact either with atmospheric moisture or with hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

Solution:

Eat beans with Weevils.

4. Chicken from China preserved using embalming substances. The same used to embalm dead bodies in Nigeria.This is a cancer causing substance that kills slowing. How else do you think chicken gets to Nigeria from China without a proper cooling system.

Solution:

Eat only local chicken. don’t buy frozen chicken. if you can’t see it running around don’t buy it!!!!!! Don’t eat at Eateries. Stop using your money to buy death.

The farmers don’t want to kill people, but they are uneducated and don’t know that they are committing mass murders. And then, they don’t have the appropriate tools to deal with the challenges they have.

NAFDAC too, in Nigeria, has become just another self-serving government agency like “we took care of ourselves” NDDC. NAFDAC officials no longer go to markets or farms. They glide around in official cars to go and extort budding manufacturers. They sit in their offices all day discussing bonuses, appointments, promotions and how they were denied the “lucrative posting”. Like the Raw Materials Development Commission, and over 100 other government agencies are total waste of money.

This is why the European Union, United States don’t want to have the Beans, Cocoa, Plantain, Yam and Pineapple exports from Nigeria. Everybody is scared of Nigeria’s irresponsible public service and Nigeria’s cancer-intense, disease-riddled agricultural produce.

It has nothing to do with racism or because they are evil white people.

Britain, the EU and the US repeatedly and tirelessly warn Nigeria to clean up its extremely poisonous farm produce. Nigerians eat killer foods.

Even the Coca-Cola we drinkis banned in the UK. A Nigerian businessman lost money trying to export Bottled-in-Nigeria Coca-Cola to the UK as it is supposed to be cheaper here because of lower labour costs. The UK Food and Drugs Office calls the Coca-Cola, Sprite etc that we drink, “cancer-Cola”.

The EU and the US are simply fed up with the reckless mass murders of Nigerian agriculture.

If we don’t do something quickly, the food we eat and that Coca-Cola we drink, is what will kill 150 million Nigerians in the next 9 years.

*Dr. Afọ́lábi Oluwadun is Professor of Medical Microbiology, Ọ́labisi Ọ́nabanjọ́ University, Agọ̀-Ìwòyè, Ògùn State.