Million Nigerians vulnerable to food poison says Agric Minister

Chief Audu Ogbeh

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development has urged the Upper House of the National Assembly to expedite actions by putting in place an enabling act that would prevent millions of Nigerians from food poisons saying the incident of tuberculosis in cows would have negatively affected many human beings if not for our over boiling culture of meat that suppressed the transfer of the disease. 

Speaking at the public hearing on three different bills on agricultural sector, Chief Audu Ogbeh lamented on the vulnerability of many Nigerians to food poisons occasioned by using cellophane lylon instead of leaves and jute bags pointed this was part of the reasons why our agricultural produce are being rejected at the European Union (EU) stressed the time has come to put a proactive checkmating law in place to ensure standard productivity.

Chief Ogbeh pointed that many Nigerians would have died of injected tuberculosis occasioned from eating cow meat but pointed that the over boiling cultural nature of people has been the saving grace from this air born disease that is very rampart among our cattle.

The Minister said that “ the food security bill is  very strategic because of the food we eat and some of the new diseases we find now are attached to the kind of things we do from production to packaging. For example, when you go to a particular section of this country, the moinmoin they will sell to you is wrapped with cellophane nylon that have been heated in pot at a temperature of 110 degree in the process of cooking, and a large dosage of dioxin has been transfered to the beans, so when they sell it to you, it is poisons you are eating as is not good for ones’ health” 

“In villages we used to use leaves for wrapping moinmoin and they are good because it contains element that is safe for the body which is anti-oxidant. You drink pour water stored in the sun at a temperature above twenty eight degree is as good as poison. These waters are supposed to be kept in a cool places based on the nylon package that can be easily heated up to make the water a poison because there no regulation’’

Chief Ogbeh stated further that “most of the cows that roam about the grazing reserves actually suffer tuberculosis, the only luck on our side is that we over cook our meat which has been able to help us suppress this diseases. We have smuggled chickens that are preserved with chemicals normally used to preserved dead bodies. Recently some of these chickens were intercepted by Nigerian Custom Service, but where they were bury, people have gone to exhume them and share them to eat. Also in some part of this country you see people using pesticide like baygon to spray fishes in order to keep away flies and this has resulted to incident of kidney and liver failures been at a very high rate. 

So we have to come up that packaging of grains must be in jute bag and not in cellophane bags. This control issue has to be tackled very seriously. Not only for export, but also to make sure Nigerians do not poison themselves any longer with what have they eaten. As wonderful as rice is, most people do not know it has some quantity of acid in it called lactic and taking large dosage of it is very dangerous for good health. Now what do we do with quality control? Should we bring back the commodity control board as there are those that will say no, and there are many that will also say yes, but I believe somebody has to be in charge of quality control at every stage for both health and export. Quarantine presence at the port must be robust in order to know what are being shipped abroad are not of wrong qualities. 

“Finally on the Institute of soil science, again we want to thank our team in the ministry who have already achieved quite a bit in the application of specific fertilizer to soil ecology in the country. It is only the Institute of soil science that can carry out research on this thing for proper best result and advise us on the kind of fertilizer we need for a particular soil. Also the Quarantine department cannot check or reject what is not suitable. These bills you want to work on will help us to achieve a lot the standardization of the sector. Also we will want to state that you should let some agencies allow us to operate at our duty posts so as to do our work at the port for the sake of the country”

On grazing Chief Ogbeh raised concern about foreign herdsmen saying “what do we do with cattle coming from Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Chad. Herdsmen carrying weapons. I know ECOWAS treaty talked about free movement of men, but I do not know what it says about animals. Our borders are too wide for ten of Donald Trump to man about 1000 kilometers from Kebbi to Bornu. What do we do with this issue; shall we talk to ECOWAS and our colleagues in West Africa? “