Nigeria to ban consumption of cow skin ‘ponmo’ for lacking nutritional value

Nigeria is proposing a ban on the consumption of cow skin known as ‘Ponmo’ for lacking nutritional value.

“To the best of my knowledge, Nigerians are the only people in the world that overvalue skin as food, after all, Ponmo has no nutritional value,” Muhammad Yakubu who heads the Nigerian Institute of Leather and Science Technology (NILEST), Zaria, Kaduna State said.

NILEST is the government agency responsible for the promotion of leather production in the Agricultural Research Institute Act of 1975. It conducts research on leather products and the use of local tanning materials in Nigeria.

Yakubu, who spoke in Abuja, said that cow skin consumption was contributing to the downward slide of production in Nigeria’s leather industry.

Ponmo is a popular supplement in soups prepared in many Nigerian homes especially in the Southwestern part of the country where families of different class use it as an alternative or together with beef meat and chicken.

Yakubu said prohibiting the consumption of Ponmo will be necessary to revive the comatose leather industry in Nigeria. He is not the first to threaten the consumption of Ponmo in Nigerian households.

In July 2019, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) warned Nigerians to be careful when buying Ponmo.

NAFDAC DG Moji Adeyeye said their investigations revealed that “unscrupulous businessmen and traders are now diverting animal hides meant for industrial use into the food chain for consumption”.

Adeyeye said that investigations further revealed that some of the companies illegally imported hides from countries such as Lebanon and Turkey.

Consequently, NILEST DG Yakubu is calling on the Nigerian Senate and the House of Representatives for legislative backing to ban the consumption of Ponmo.

Yakubu argued that the consumption of cow skin is partly responsible for the present comatose state of tanneries in Nigeria.

He also said the current National Leather Policy had addressed some fundamental problems of the sector.

“If we get our tanneries, our footwear, and leather production working well in Nigeria, people will hardly get pomo to buy and eat,” Yakubu said.

“When implemented fully, it would turn around most of the comatose tanneries and ginger greater output in production.”

The Guardian

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Nigeria battling floods ‘beyond control’ as warning given of dams overflowing

Nigeria is battling its worst floods in a decade with more than 300 people killed in 2022 including at least 20 this week, as authorities said the situation is “beyond our control.”

The floods in 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states and capital city have affected half a million people, including 100,000 displaced and more than 500 injured, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said.

The disaster has also destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland, worsening fears of a disruption of food supply in Africa’s most populous country.

Since 2012, “this [the flood-related deaths] is the highest we ever had,” said Manzo Ezekiel, a spokesperson for the disaster management agency.

Nigeria sees flooding every year, often as a result of non-implementation of environmental guidelines and inadequate infrastructure. Authorities are blaming the floods this year on water overflowing from local rivers, unusual rainfalls and the release of excess water from Lagdo dam in neighbouring Cameroon’s northern region.

The Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency predicted more floods in 2022 than last year due to “excessive rainfalls and contributions from external flows” such as the dam in Cameroon.

On Monday, Nigeria’s disaster management agency alerted more than a dozen states of “serious consequences” in the coming weeks as two of the country’s dams started to overflow.

“I want to advise all the governments of the frontline states to move away communities at risk of inundation, identify safe higher grounds for evacuation of persons and prepare adequate stockpiles of food and non-food items,” said the head of Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, Mustapha Habib Ahmed.

In the north-west Jigawa state, floods killed more than 20 people in the last week, Yusuf Sani Babura, head of the Jigawa State Emergency Management Agency, told the AP. The state has recorded 91 deaths from flooding this year – more than any state in the country.

“We are facing devastating floods beyond our control,” said Babura. “We have tried our best and we couldn’t stop it.”

The floods have also destroyed crops, mostly in Nigeria’s northern region, which produces much of what the country eats, raising concerns that they could further affect food supplies already disrupted by armed conflict in the country’s north-west and central regions.


In the Benue state, Aondongu Kwagh-bee said he visited his rice farm recently and discovered that a heavy downpour had “wiped away everything.”

“Right now, there is nothing there. Just sand filled up and the rice has been washed away,” the 30-year-old said.

Akintunde Babatunde, an Abuja-based climate analyst, said the main cause of Nigeria’s annual flooding problem was the poor infrastructure of roads, drainage and waste disposal.

“Unusual rainfall is evidence of the changing climate,” he said.

AP

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