In the first of a five-part BusinessDay series on hazardous chemicals and fake products in Nigeria’s food chain, Josephine Okojie-Okeiyi and Cynthia Egboboh reports on how banned pesticides and harmful substances enter everyday food, killing and exposing consumers to health risks.
At the entrance of Ile-Epo Market, large metal bowls filled with beans sit in front of a trader who calls out to attract customers moving in and out of the market.
To shoppers, the beans are an affordable staple used to prepare everyday meals in Nigerian households. BusinessDay found that farmers are using banned and harmful pesticides linked to cancer to protect the beans, casting doubts about the safety of food sold in local markets.
Findings by BusinessDay showed that excessive amounts of the pesticide dichlorvos are used in bean production to safeguard the harvest and prevent loss.
Research also found that excessive amounts and prolonged exposure to the dichlorvos pesticide through food consumption could cause death, genotoxic, neurological, reproductive, carcinogenic, immunological, hepatic, renal, respiratory, metabolic, dermal, and other systemic effects.
This goes beyond beans, further findings by BusinessDay across major Lagos markets found a wide range of staples laced with harmful chemicals to make produce look reddish and boost profits.
Palm oil tinted with dyes, and plantain ripened with industrial calcium carbide are sold openly across Nigerian markets.
The practice is exposing millions of consumers to chemicals linked to kidney failure and organ damage in Africa’s most populous nation, where food safety oversight remains fragmented.
According to the Alliance for Action on Pesticide in Nigeria (AAPN), over 65 percent of active ingredients across various pesticides and brands in Nigerian homes, stores, farms and markets are classified as Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs).
The group added that Nigeria records about 200,000 deaths annually due to food poisoning, while the cost of illnesses associated with foodborne diseases is estimated at $3.6 billion per year.
Read also: Food inflation diverges across states as Lagos hits 34.4%, -7.5% in Taraba, Borno records 2.2%
A deadly trend across markets
BusinessDay observed that food items contaminated with hazardous pesticides are being sold across Nigerian markets.
At Mile 12 and Ile-Epo markets, traders said calcium carbide is essential for daily supply. Traders who asked not to be identified said that without forced ripening, they would have no plantain to sell the next day, as consumers prefer ripe produce.
Another trader who sells palm oil said buyers equate deep red palm oil with quality. “The redder it is, the faster it sells,” he said, noting that this is why some traders add colour ingredients to their produce to sell faster.
Consuming these chemicals over time carries severe health risks, according to doctors. “The health effects range from kidney failure to cancer,” said Patrick Ijewere, medical director at The Nutrition Hospital in Lagos.
“These diseases were not prevalent before but are now rising at an alarming rate because of unwholesome foods,” he said.
NAFDAC has banned Sudan dyes, calcium carbide for ripening and dichlorvos above 0.01mg/kg, but enforcement at open markets is weak.
Qrisstuberg Amua, a professor and executive director of the Centre for Food Safety and Agricultural Research (CEFSAR), said processing is another area where harmful chemicals are used aside from markets and farms.
Cassava, for instance, is highly carcinogenic if not properly processed, Amua noted. It used to take four days to process garri, but these days, it takes food processors a day, he added.
“They add hypo and detergents to quicken fermentation and whitening. This is wrong and must stop to save lives,” Amua noted.
On bean preservation, he said analysis of sniper, officially dichlorvos, shows adulteration.
“When we subject it to analysis, we found it contains more hazardous chemicals like chlorpyrifos and paraquat,” he said.
“These are on NAFDAC’s banned list, yet they pour into the country at an alarming rate,” he added.
Read also: Food inflation edges to 19.59% as Nigeria’s headline rate drops to 14.63%
Fuelling export rejection
The use of chemicals by traders and farmers has continued to drive rejection of Nigerian food exported to the European Union (EU), the U.S. and others.
The European Union (EU) had in 2016 rejected 24 food products from Nigeria.
Groundnuts were rejected because they contained aflatoxin, while palm oil had a colouring agent that was carcinogenic.
The European Food Safety Authority had likewise rejected beans from Nigeria in 2015 because they contained between 0.03 mg/kg and 4.6mg/kg of dichlorvos pesticide, when the acceptable maximum residue limit was 0.01mg/kg.
The ban is still in place, indicating that Nigerian farmers, traders and exporters are yet to change from such practices.
“In the long run, produce from this country doesn’t meet requirements for international export because of these unwholesome practices,” Amua said. “Over there, foods are tested before they are allowed for human consumption.”
Low awareness fuelling food poisoning
Despite the danger that these chemicals in food portend, most farmers and traders in Africa’s most populous nation are not aware.
This widespread dearth of knowledge by players across the food value chain has continued to fuel their use and is responsible for the loss of billions of naira Nigeria would have generated from non-oil exports if agro commodities were not rejected.
“I never knew that adding red dye to ground dried pepper to sell is dangerous to human health,” a trader who gave her name as Bose told BusinessDay. “I have stopped using it since someone told me because I also consume what I sell,” she noted.
Experts say traders’ and farmers’ education on the dangers of these harmful chemicals, strong regulation, and appropriate infrastructure will help reduce their use in food.
“People adding those materials don’t even know the chemical composition or the toxicological implications,” Amua said.
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