There is a baleful outlook about the safety of the foods consumed in Nigeria. In a scary move, the European Union has rejected several food items originating from Nigeria. Citing poor quality, contamination and high levels of chemicals in the preserved products, the EU banned 67 processed and semi-processed foods from Nigeria in 2015 and 2016. This development poses grave threat to the health of Nigerians who consume these foods that are being disallowed in Europe. As a matter of urgency, the government should initiate a sweeping review of our agricultural practices. Essentially, the issue centres on how to safeguard public health. While the Europeans, because of their adherence to standards, might have saved their citizens from these harmful farm products, Nigerians are blindly eating them. According to the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed, an organisation which assesses quality, 42 food items from Nigeria were not fit for consumption in 2015. In 2016, 25 such foods were barred from entering Europe. This is terrifying. The RASFF reports detailed how Nigerian foods fell far short of the minimum required standards. As a result, it rejected items like beans, melon seeds, palm oil, bitter leaf, pumpkin, shelled groundnut and live snails. Most of the items were rejected for not having labels, improper packaging, lack of health certificates and other entry documents. These are foods consumed with relish in Nigeria. The EU analyses discovered that some of the foods contained glass fragments, rodent excreta and dead insects. It noted high levels of chemicals like dichlorvos, diometrate and trichlorphon in the products. Some of these chemicals were used in the planting process; others were used in preservation. But this could not prevent microbes such as salmonella, aflatoxins and mould from contaminating them, according to the European regulator. This is not totally unexpected, considering the agricultural practices here. But it should provoke Nigerians to ask pertinent questions about the safety of the foods they eat. To buttress the EU’s position, Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, early this year, warned that Nigerians might be killing themselves in instalments through the food that they eat. Ogbeh listed several of such poisonous foods, including moin-moin wrapped with cellophane (nylon). Another is sachet water exposed to the sun at 28 degrees Celsius. This causes liver and kidney failure, Ogbeh cautioned. He says, “Many of the cows being moved from one place to the other by herdsmen are already infected with tuberculosis….” This is worrisome. The wrong application of fertiliser by farmers poses its own challenges. Likewise, the processing of palm-oil, garri, yam flour, fufu and other staples has been found to be unsafe. Palm-oil is refined using archaic, cumbersome methods, while garri and yam flour are spread on hills and roadsides in the rural areas, where they are contaminated by rodents. We urge the Health Minister, Isaac Adewole, to respond to these concerns in the interest of public health. However, apart from the dangerous foods produced locally, Nigerians are also exposed to danger from imported foods, particularly frozen poultry, palm-oil and fruits. Ogbeh explains: “Smuggled frozen chicken preserved with formalin, which is also used for preservation of dead bodies, have been potent poison being consumed by Nigerians with attendant serious health challenges in the land.” This is serious. The minister should use this information to instil sanity in the system. To eliminate hazardous foods, the templates being employed in the United States and the EU should be of interest to the Ministries, Agencies and Departments of government saddled with food safety. First, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria should be revamped for service delivery. Compromised food imports are not tolerated in civilised climes. To protect the health of its people, the US authorities had banned beef imports from France in January 1998 following the outbreak of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (foot and mouth disease in cattle). The moratorium was lifted in January 2017. The US Food and Drug Administration demands that locally-produced and imported foods meet its requirements or be banned. Consequently, it has just banned three toxic food packaging chemicals used in making grease, stain and water-repelling food packaging and is considering banning seven cancer-causing food additives used in so-called artificial and natural flavourings. We commend these systems to our negligent government: it should keep away tainted food from the public, and confiscate those that manage to escape scrutiny at the borders.
The Nigerian Customs Service has to be up and running in eradicating the smuggling of frozen poultry products into the Nigerian market. The agriculture, health and interior ministries need to task the MDAs under them to prevent hazardous fish and fruits from entering our shores. The Federal Government should sanction the heads of the MDAs concerned if these products continue to infiltrate the local market. As the standardisation of local farm produce has broken down, Ogbeh, in collaboration with states and local government councils, should re-introduce and strengthen the agricultural extension services, for assistance to farmers. The agency, which supervised, monitored and aided farmers on the right amount of chemicals to be applied in the past, among other technical assistance, has a crucial role to play in the restoration of standards. Farmers should be encouraged to form cooperative societies to enable them to benefit from new knowledge in farming, including the use of improved seedling, processing, labelling and packaging. Interest groups should mount constant pressure on government to make its agencies be on their toes to eliminate dangerous agricultural practices.
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Most of the items were rejected for not having labels, improper packaging, lack of health certificates and other entry documents. These are foods consumed with relish in Nigeria.



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