Category: Natural Health

There goes Nigeria again, enigmatic as ever. She is blessed in home gardens, farms and her forests with potent anti-malaria herbs. But she is stretching forth her hands for a malaria vaccine which critics say may contain anti-fertility agents for reducing her population. What a naive nation, you may think! Oh, no  government health officials know what they are after… Their own share of what is in it for them for helping the foreign purveyors to vaccinate more than 200 million Nigerians. This column will discuss no fewer than five anti malaria herbs which quieten and cure malaria fever. Many people do not know much about them. Many others have not even heard about them. So, there must be millions of Nigerians perennially troubled by malaria fever that pharmaceutical drugs have not helped, but are not aware that herbs can end their torment. Such Nigerians constitute the malaria vaccine market which Euro-American companies are targeting, probably with population reduction agenda. Thankfully, I have known about them for about 45 years. Since then, neither my wife nor one of my sons, both of whom are genotype AA persons, has been down with malaria , let alone take hospital drugs or need a malaria vaccine. One of these herbs is called CHANKA PIEDRA (also know as PHYLLANTUS AMARUS). The second is MORMODICA CHARANTIA. The third is CYMBOPOGON CITRATUS. The fourth is ENANTIA CHLORANTA. Do not worry about those botanical names. Soon, I will tell you what they are in simpler terms. Meanwhile, if you cannot stand the stress of picking herbs and cleaning them up, Donkat Ali is a proprietary formula you may wish to try. It is a pity that Nigeria’s healthcare system or shall I call it the sick care system, does not appreciate the value of herbs in the prevention and cure of diseases and puts as many ignorant persons it can find in the hospital system for dowsing with chemical drugs …and now a vaccine!

You may not blame the big pharma oriented health official for supporting a magic bullet vaccine strike against malaria. About 100,000 Nigerians die every year from malaria fever and it’s complications. These cases are among the 50 million or 25 per cent of the population who attend hospitals every year in respect of malaria fever attacks. About 60 per cent of these cases are outpatients.The number of sufferers keeps growing with population growth.The environment still supports safe Havens for the mosquito to thrive. Still undefeated by man is the anophelis female mosquito which needs and steals human blood to make its eggs grow and mature. More eggs means more mosquitoes. Many homes are not well protected against the invation of mosquitoes. Many persons do not know it takes about seven and 30 days from a mosquito bite for malaria fever to develop in the average persons and that anti-malaria herb teas should replace teas which only tickle the pallate. So, by the time they know what is going on, plasmodium falciparum, the parasite injected into the blood stream with a mosquito bite, may have damaged too many red blood cells and organs such as the liver in which it sometimes hides. Nothing on this earth ever wishes to die. Mosquitoes do not wish to die. So does plasmodium falciparum. When it notices the presence of anti malaria big pharma chemicals in the blood stream, plasmodium falciparum may rush for safety in the liver. The physician must be careful to not aggressively pursue it into this very important organ, lest damage to liver cells may occur. One of these drugs is fancidar. It is designed to treat acute uncomplicated malaria, according to www.drugs.com, which lists the side effects to include : 

“Headache, peripheral neuritis, mental depression, convulsion, ataxia, hallucination, tinnitus, vertigo, insomnia, apathy, fatigue, muscle weakness, nervousness and polyneuritis.”

Many patients fare no better under other malaria drugs. Thus, the search goes on for newer, more effective and safer drugs . But mother nature never changes her anti malaria herbs, because they were given to man in the will of the All Wise Creator. Man did not create himself or his body or the world in which he finds himself. Yet he always tries to pose in all his endeavours as if he is the boss, without taking mother nature into account. And that is why he is moving again from pharmaceutical drugs for malaria treatment to a vaccine.

Drug failure

Malaria drugs have failed or are failing for at least three major reasons.

1) It causes many side effects which many users cannot stand, such as the ones mentioned above and more.

2)The way pharmaceutical malaria drugs work is not the way the medicine of mother nature works. Drugs work by directly attacking germs and parasites such as plasmodium falciparum. As I said earlier, nothing which exists wishes to de-exist. So, every living organism adapts itself to any inhospitable environment. Plasmodium falciparum is no exception. Thus, from 1950 when I was born, many malaria drugs have hit the malaria market and gone away after some time. The earlier ones I can recall from my youth include paludrine, quinine, aspro etc. They kept becoming ineffective against plasmodium falciparum. Yet they do not defeat herbs because herbs do not directly wage war on them. Rather, herbs stimulate the immune system to do it’s work. This is a more successful pathway to healing because it is the immune system, not chemical drugs, that the Will of God, through the hands of mother nature, gave the job of defending the human body against infections and diseases. It should be clear from the foregoing that the wrong pathway to the treatment of malaria fever has made many persons endemic sufferers of malaria fever over the years. This situation makes such patients change medication and increase dosage until their bodies become too toxic with drug residues which cause or support the emergence of other health challenges. In this regard, I would forever not only remember but, also, give gratitude to revealed knowledge of the 1920s which gives mankind the following hint regarding their health…Neither drugs nor injections, but the right foods and drinks  bring lasting health.

Vaccines

Vaccination is an offshoot of the germ theory. When it became somewhat settled that germs cause diseases, the next step was to develop drugs which would kill disease-causing germs at dosages which would cause little or no health problems for humans. With drugs failing and germs becoming more difficult to kill without the human body itself being hurt or harmed, the idea that immunity holds a better key to disease cure began to unfold. Really, what makes the difference when two persons are exposed to the same environment of germs which clobbers one underfoot as it were and the other goes scot free or unhurt. The African Black Ant displays this sort of resilience to the amazement of researchers, although under another circumstance. In several studies, it has been exposed to an exclusive sugar diet or feed without developing diabetes or symptoms of it. I have an uncle in his 80s who has been drinking beer from adolescence, akin to fish drinking water,but without exhibiting symptoms of alcohol abuse. The resilience has been narrowed to the work of antioxidants from the immune profile. Thus, vaccines and vaccination as a means of boosting immunity became popular. Vaccines are weakened germs introduced into the body which the body’s immune system fights and defeats to develop a memory of them, as the security agencies of a country tracks criminals.

  Today, there are two world views of vaccines.

1) The first is as described above, namely that vaccines are magic bullets which deal with germs once and for all. It is widely believed that a person vaccinated against a germ can never be successfully attacked by that germ.

2)The opposing view is that vaccines can be dangerous because their side effects of which we have no final definitive knowledge as yet, may take decades to manifest. In some scientific circles, the multiplicity in the rate of cancers worldwide has been related to some vaccinations of the 1950s which, as children, some members of my generation took for diseases such as tuberculosis and polio.

Beyond these opposing world views, there is an emerging idea which is gaining currency, of vaccines being used for a hidden agenda against certain population groups. The case has been well made against COVID-19 vaccines. Why was the vaccine forced down the throat of African nations whose people suffered minimal number of deaths when the vaccine was most needed in Europe and the United States where people were dying “like flies”? Even the chief executive officer of one of the companies which manufactured one brand said he did not get vaccinated because he had no immunity problems! The President of Madagascar warned in the heat of the COVID-19 controversy that Africans should not trust that the vaccination then president Donald Trump received before the cameras of CNN was the vaccine sent to Africa. Lately, the controversy has wandered to encompass speculations that a malaria vaccine may include ingredients to make African men and women grow less fertile. It is said that this is a way of curbing African population growth by white supremacists.

Malaria Herbs.

I am most at home here. I raised my family on them, still personally use them and have helped many long suffering persons regain their freedom from inefficient drugs and perennial breakdown from malaria fever. As I promised earlier, I will now offer some insight into about four malaria herbs I am familiar with. For want of space, the list cannot be longer.

Chanka Piedra

The herb is well known in Asia by this name which means stone crusher. The crushing of stones in the gall bladder and in the kidneys is one of its specialties. To this, some Nigerian researchers have added dissolution of cataracts of the eye lens, also a stone. It is hypotensive. That means it lowers blood pressure. It is also hypoglycemic. That means it lowers blood sugar. It kills all sorts of germs, including the dreaded staphylococcus aureus. Besides, it is an anodyne , that it is pain killing. It is rich in iron and, therefore, good for iron deficiency anaemia. It is a good health support for malaria prevention and cure.

 In Yoruba land, chanca piedra is known by different names, depending on the local dialect. The plant is known, too, to other peoples of Africa, who have local names for it. When I experienced high fever symptoms during COVID-19 season, I placed chanca piedra in glass bottles filled with water to solarise the extract. I also kept some in aromatic schnaps bottles. This extracted all the green colour. The solarised extract produced a golden water solution, like the boiled water extract.

Professor L.S Gill , Indian author of Ethnomedical  Uses Of Plants in Nigeria, gives us some insight into the herbs I mentioned earlier. Born in 1940, he obtained his first degree, B.Sc Botany/Zoology /Chemistry at the age of 19 in 1959, his M.Sc Cytology in 1963 and Ph.D in 1971. In 1976, he was appointed Professor of Botany at the University of Benin, Nigeria. Professor Gill was actively engaged in Biosystematics, Cytogenetics, Morphology, Ecology of weeds and Applied Botany.

Of Chanka Piedra (Phylantus Amarus), Professor Gill says:”local names-Benin (Ebe benizo), Yoruba(ehinbisowo/ehinolube/dobisowo). The Bonus use the dried plant as a vermifuge (worm expellant). The decoction of the plant is used as a purgative.”

Mormodica Charantia

The yorubas call it Ejirin, and use it for all sorts of health disturbances, including diabetes and uterine fibroids. In large doses and prolonged use, it is believed to offset fertility in both genders.The good news is that the offset is reversible with discontinuation of the herb. Professor Gill says: “English names:African cucumber, bitter gourd. Local names Yoruba (ejinrinwere); Uhrobo (udjiro); Igbo (Alo ose). In Uhrobo land, the decoction of the whole plant is used for the convulsion, nervous disorder and as purgative. In Borno, the decoction of the leaves is used as a cure for cholera. The seeds are used as vermifuge, emetic, purgative, bitter tonic and jaundice. The juice of the leaves and fruit is also used as an antihelmintic and purgative. The juice is also a relief for soles of the feet. It is also applied around the eyes for the cure of night blindness. The fruits, either in the form of cooked vegetable or as a soup is believed to cure diabetes. 

Stand out for recognition, Mrs Comfort Obayuana. Arguably, she was the first Nigerian to put Momordica Charantia on the Nigerian health food store shelf in a presentable proprietary form. She named it Karela, the name the Indians call it. She presented it at the 2002 Accra A-SNAPP conference at which Nigeria was the single largest African delegation, surpassing even that of host, country, Ghana. Mrs Obayuana also produced other Nigerian herbs in powder form. But, alas, the high cost of diesel to run machines for drying herbs and the huge expense of freeze drying machines scuttled the production capacity of her company, Healthways.

Lemon Grass

Lemon grass became very popular in Nigeria as anti-snake and anti–malaria herb long before grasses such as wheat grass acquired their reputation worldwide as power houses of medicinal ingredients. In Nigeria, Lipton tea, a member of the Unilever group, once asked the Federal Institute for Industrial Research Oshodi, (FIIRO) to research lemon grass for anti-malaria purposes. FIIRO found it a great malaria herb. But the parent company in the United Kingdom did not favour the idea of lemon grass being sold by the company to protect Lipton tea sale. Lemon grass proved it could kill plasmodium falciparum in another study carried out at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). I infused about 10 drops of lemon grass oil or the tincture in about 1.5 liters of water which I encourage my friends or acquaintances to sip when they wish to overcome malaria fever or to prevent it, especially when pharmaceuticals have failed. Professor Gill says of lemon grass (cymbopogon citratus)

“Waapa and Kooko-oba (Yoruba) ; Iti (uhrobo) . The leaves along with honey are used for cough, malaria and chest pain. It is also used for ringworm. It could stimulate the nervous system. It is an ingredient of many traditional healers’ recipes”

Enantia Chlorantha

Don’t mind me and the Botanists. This herb is known to the yorubas as awopa. All herb sellers and traditional medicine practitioners know of it. It helped me a great deal with my COVID fever symptoms. In herbal medicine, it is widely used for “jaundice, malaria, fever, infective hepatitis”, according to pubmed.ncbi.nim.nih.gov.

What does professor Gill say about this herb? “Osopupa, Osomolu(Yoruba); erenba-vbogo(Noni). The root is taken hot in the morning and at night while going to bed for the treatment of malaria and jaundice . The bark is also used for treating leprous spots. The water extract of the bark could cure liver damage. The stem can be used as uterus stimulant.

Conclusion

Mother Nature has answers for all our health problems. She made our world in The Will of God. Then, she knew we were coming to the earth and before we did, had provided for all our needs…food and medicinal herbs for whatever illnesses we may expose the body to. We rejected the food of mother nature. We overturned the circadian rhythm. Chickens, goats and birds go to sleep when the sun is down. Not us humans. We live like drunkards who know our nation is governed by laws but cannot understand that our world is governed by natural laws. Pharmaceutical drugs are failing us. We are turning to vaccines with all their health dangers and the possibility of denaturing target populations. Happily, through revealed knowledge, we now know we can do away with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. The foregoing medicinal herbs and many more that time and space do not allow me to mention here can be cultivated on plantations and processed by factories working under good manufacturing processes (GMP). Why can we not have these herbs in the form of powder, tea, tablets, capsules, water fluid extracts and even tincture and homeopathic remedies? Let’s think and act more as natural human beings in partnership with mother nature. Malaria fever was never, and still is no big deal. If it was, our forebears would not have survived it to propagate our generation. What kept malaria fever in check in those days, when they had no pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines? Herbs, of course! Malaria need not kill anyone in our country. We do not need a malaria vaccine.  

If wishes were horses, Ike Ekweremadu, his wife, Beatrice, and their doctor, Obinna, Obeta, would be home from London  by now, their daughter, Sonia, in tow or left  in hospital. Either genuinely or in eye or lip service, many Nigerians led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo knelt before his Lordship Jeremy Johnson, begging that he have mercy on a “Christianly” and “first offender” Ekweremadu, a lawyer and deputy Senate president of the 9th Nigerian Senate. But Mr Justice Johnson sent Ekweremadu, 60, to prison for nine years and six months, Beatrice, 56, to four years and six months and Obeta, 50, for 10 years. He cleared Sonia, 25. The Ekweremadus  tricked a 21 -year old Lagos street trader to London,  promising employment on   7000 pounds Sterling for domestic services.Their intent was to discreetly harvest one of his kidneys as replacement for Sonia’s damaged kidney in an 80,000 pounds sterling surgery at the Royal Free Hospital. Obeta, resident in the United Kingdom, introduced the young man to the hospital as a kidney donor. The Ekweremadus ran into trouble when the surgeons discovered the so-called donor did not know why he was in hpspital. In the United Kingdom, as in Nigeria and the rest of the civilised world, that is a grievious crime!

Many Nigerians are nailing the  Ekweremadus.Many others sympathise with them, not because they do not know they committed a crime. They look at the matter from the softer side of life as a temptation before which the Ekweremadu buckled as parents desperate to save the life of their  dying daughter. While not being judgemental, this column cannot agree with Obasanjo that Ekweremadu is a “christianly” first offender. For Ekweremadu has a record  of back- door ways and means. A man’s behaviour, his propensity, is inseperable from him,like his shadow. In 2015, Ekweremadu connived with Senator Bukola Saraki to undeservedly become Deputy Senate President and, thereby, deprived the ruling party of control in the 9th Nigerian Senate. Of the immorality called politics, this column commented at that time in an article titled WHATEVER IS FALSE WILL INEVITABLY COLLAPSE. That misdeed collapsed in 2019 with the ouster of Bukola Saraki, Ekweremadu’s  “principal-in-crime”, not only from the Senate, but also from the mainstream politics of his home and power base, Kwara State. In 2023, Ekweremadu’s penchant for backdoor deals would land him, his wife and his Nigerian doctor contractor in London in jail.

If Ekweremadu is that straight forward as Obasanjo told Mr Justice Johnson, he would not have travelled on the route he trod.He has the money and the influence to shop around the world for more than one kidney for Sonia. An 80,000 pounds Sterling  about (46.6 )million naira surgery is not what a poor man can think of, nor is a 7000 pounds sterling(4) million naira offer for the domestic services of a 21-year-old who pushes his wears in wheel barrows in the Lagos street trade. So, why would they remove the roof from a poor man’s house  to roof their own palatial home? Do they not have other children who have healthy kidneys? Who wishes to part with one of two kidneys? What if the spare and only kidney fails?

While I do not and will never support criminality, my heart softened somewhat towards the Ekweremadus when I remembered the yoruba proverb that Eni ti ko ba  ri ogun lo npe ara re lokunrin  (It is the man on whose doorep there   is no war who calls himself a man). I am  not exhonerating the Ekweremadus of crime. What I am saying  is that what we vehemently condemn in other persons may be inherent in us. How many persons do not remove the roofs on other people’s houses to roof theirs? It is all about hacking other persons down and out to make ourselves happy. It is all about breaking the command of the Almighty Creator that we are free to enjoy all the bounties he has placed in his wonderful creation for our benefit and enjoyment, provided that we do not hurt or make someone else unhappy while we do so.  Are there no women who, desirous of having their own children strike the settled homes of other women? Are there no men who no longer respect the wedding ring on a woman’s finger? Is rate of child motherhood not escalating? How many lives does a politician destroy to acquire power? What of the Accountant General who destroys the treasury to make himself and his family happy and impoverish the nation?

ARCHILLES HEEL

I  tried to see the travails of the Ekweremadus differently…as a parent . The children of nowadays are the archilles heels of their parents. Many children have become gods and goddesses to their parents. The first of the 10 Christian commandments says: THOU SHALL HAVE NO  OTHER gods BUT ME.  The Bible says  Jesus told Christians to remove their  right eyes if they make them commit sin. But children have become gods and goddesses, the archilles heel which make  their parents unable to think and  act straight.

Many of today’s children or parents have not heard about the archilles heel. It is the weakest point in everyone’s life. Archilles was a valiant Greek soldier in those days of  wars with Troy. In Greek mythology, the father of archilles was a formidable king, his mother an immortal nymph. She tried to make him, too, immortal. She held him by the heel and dipped his body  into a river of immortality which made all his body but the heel by which she held him immortal. Thus, the heel became the weakest point in ARCHILLES body. Archilles probably died of a poisoned arrow which struck his heel or ruptured the tibial artery.

CHILDREN

As the archilles heel of their parents, many parents cannot sleep well or think straight when they think about the sagging lives of their children. Butterflies fly in their tummies. Goose pimples grow on their skin. Their hearts sink. They are nervous, hypertensive and even become depressed! How many parents can stand upright, their leg unyielding, when they behold their children dying , and there seems to be nothing they can do about it? Such parents may end up desperate like the Ekweremadus, uprooting someone else’s roof to roof their own house!

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Royal College of Surgeons in the the United kingdom warned  decades ago that a generation of children who were the  Archilles heel of their parents was already upon us. The Royal College of Surgeons even prophesied that many of today’s children would not survive their parents. In the 1990s, the WHO advised member states to legally limit  fat, sugar, salt and chemicals in foods. Many countries turned deaf ears. The WHO said many studies  conclusively revealed that many degenerative diseases, including diabetes, liver, kidney disease and cancer, had origins in these food components. One transnational soft drink company  reduced the sugar content of its product. The drink , being addictive, tasted so different that the consumers noticed the change without being told. They switched over to the substitute drink. As the rival company began to gain the upper hand in the market, the repentant or complying company threw caution to the wind and returned to the market, re-invigorated.

At that time, I was Editor of The Guardian newspaper. As a health enthusiast,I easily saw correlations between emergent health profiles and the changing Nigerian diet, especially among young persons. I tried to make The Guardian investigate this assumption. But I gave up when I discovered that the study could be elaborate and that we did not have the funding and manpower capacity for it.

I  reflected on  my youth and found I was as guilty as the young ones of that time. Journalism almost damaged my health in the 1970s. In every newsroom, you are likely to find a poster on the wall which announces… THIS IS A MAD HOUSE.  What would you say of Theo Ola, the bulky news Editor of the Daily Times then? He was angrily waiting for your copy and watching his wristwatch or the wall clock. If you came late, he could  abuse your mother, yes your mother! Could you blame him? If the paper went late and money was lost,  he could be fired. If you  challenged him of abusing your mother, he could pull his top dress, clench his huge fists and come for you. If you were intelligent, you will flee! When the madness of the newsroom was over, chief Theo Ola could seek you out, calm your nerves and invite you to the new can can, down the road off kakawa street, home at that time of the daily times.

The new can taught me to drink beer and to eat meat pies. Where was the time to leisurely sit before a meal?  Even now, conditioned by the hurly burly of those days, I still eat my meals in record time, seeing everyone else at the table as slow coaches! That’s not good for my health, I know. I am not alone. Nduka Irabor, news Editor of the Guardian, went to a nearby canteen one day before work peaked. He met Wole Agunbiade and Niyi Obaremi. He had lunch with them and bought each of them a bottle of beer. He finished his meal and his beer and returned to the news room before them. When they arrived, queries were waiting on their desks for “delaying production”. One gentleman tried to get close to me because he and my wife were classmates in a masters degree class at the University of Lagos.(He would later become a commissioner in his state). He wrote an unintelligible report for Nduka Irabor, who called him “an illiterate” . Embarrassed, he rushed to my office to complain. I calmly explained to him this had nothing to do with degrees but profession! Did he not feel the heat the day Jullyette Ukabiala, one of our star reporters, came late to the news room long after I had angrily closed the cover page, ready to be beaten next day by The Punch or The Concord? I tore her copy to shreds and threw them at her, threatening to fling the telephone box at her if she did not quickly evacuate herself from my presence. In the newsroom, editors are like military officers at war in the unending battle against deadlines. Here was Jullyette, the young woman we all called queen, a nickname given to her by Lade Bonuola, our boss. She went to Ladbone as we call Bonuola, but returned empty handed. What would a general do? Fight a war all alone without able officers? Would Bonuola produce a good quality newspaper all by himself? Could I if I put down Irabor? I was humbled, though, when Jullyette came to my office the next day and narrated her experiences to me over the past month. Our Defence Correspondent, who would later go on study leave to study for a higher degree in strategic studies at Kingston College, she had terrible encounters with the Chinese army and even fainted in a taxi which was bringing her  to the office. The driver detoured to a clinic where she got some respite before heading for the office. I sprang to my feet, and sent someone   to 118 Ogunlana Drive, Surulere, Lagos and another to  Papa Johnson, Brig. Mobolaji  Johnson’s father, on Olonode Street, Ebutte meta. Both men sold apple cider vinegar (ACV) which defeats  the Chinese army. Happily, Jullyette knew her Editor  was under newsroom pressure ,  and was  a loving, playing Editor.

DIGRESSION

Turns and twists are inevitable  comic relief in matters this serious…children of this generation not surviving their parents. I could have been gone long before now but for that High Grace which linked me at the age of 27 to the knowledge of the physical body being a priceless gift from God to enable human spirit fufil the purpose of their earthly existence. I lived in Shomolu with my grandmother and worked on Kakawa Street. I couldn’t drink Shomolu water, well water. For every meal, I drank two bottles of popular soft drinks. Each bottle had about seven cubes of sugar. In the office, I ate sandwiches or meat pies washed down with beer or soda. At parties,I went for big bottles of stout beer and wished to develop muscles. WATE-ON had not helped much. I tried egovin. To half a glass of this egg based drink, I added one tin of peak milk , some cubes of sugar and one raw egg.

My abdomen bloated. I could hardly breathe. One slice of bread balooned my abdomen to my back in search of more space. I knew I was dying. Two of my cousins (Tokunbo Otusajo and Sunmisola Oshidipe) died about then. I thought I was next in line. I couldn’t tell my father. My mother was gone when I was nine. My grandmother took me to her husband in the village. He led me to  a female herbalist. She gave herbs which were to be cooked with a type of fish. I was to talk to no one before I ate it at cock crow, and the person to cook it was to talk to no one, including me. After I ate the meal, without cleaning my mouth before, a taboo for me in those days, my nurse, who was one of the wives of Baba Alajo Shomolu, brought me a breakfast of pap and peppered stew. I was afraid to eat it. The doctors had said I had “wind”. Would I bloat up again and possibly die? I tried the meal…and was shocked that nothing happened. For lunch, she brought rice, and “swallow” for dinner. I rejoiced.

 Youth service in Uyo and Calabar brought me the knowledge of creation and the God willed creation died for the body in health and healing in sickness. When I married in 1983, my wife and I decided never to cook with MSG (monosodium glutamate) although her bossom childhood friend was one of the chief marketers. We knocked off bread, milk, sugar, margarine and butter. Herb teas replaced processed teas. We ate beef for a while. We knew that egg like milk, was loaded with chemicals and hormones and toxins from animals denied their God -given freedom to range. No one has ever cooked noodles in our cooking pots. My nostrils know the aroma but my tongue has never tasted them. I brought up my children under this dietary regimen. For their milk, Mrs Margaret Adu brought us 48 bottles of soya every week. They had a bottle each before breakfast and another before dinner. Mrs Adu was such an expert at home made soya milk, you wouldn’t know you were drinking soya. Boarding school and the exercise of free will in adult life however changed these children. Unpleasant experiences of the detours make them, like prodigal children , hunger for their robust childhood beginnings. Even at 73, I have not stopped being a diet “headmaster” of a parent. My health still experiences  vestiges of the carelessness and misadventures of youth, which  I long to protect young ones  against.

SONIA

I pray  Sonia receives all the help she needs. Guilt feelings over the plight of her parents may compound her  problems and theirs. Tragedies such as this brings families together. She should live to make them happy because they went down to make her live. I employ her case as an index of the health misfortunes or impending health calamities of many young persons who may not survive their parents. Many of such children consume too much junk food. There is a 15-year-old somewhere in Fagba area of Lagos who is battling with cancer of the blood! Young persons in their20s or 30s are dying of colon cancer. Last year, a mother extracted a worm from the breast wound of a girl barely 15. This worm survived in saline solution over three days! A girl in youth service tested positive to nephritis and kidney cysts, exactly what killed her father. Many young women take oral thrush and vaginal candidiasis with kid gloves, unknown to them that they are signals of burgeoning candida colonies in their bodies caused by sugar overload. Sonia’s diet may have contributed to her kidney challenge. There is hardly a Life Force in junk food. It is loaded instead with free radicals, toxins, chemicals, heavy metals etc. It has no minerals,vitamins, antioxidants, proteins etc. It is a load of carbohydrate without chromium and an invitation to diabetes. It makes the assaulted organs grow weak and die installmentally. That is why many young people hooked on sugar and junk food may become brain fogged, hyperactive and scatter brains. They may bloat up, suggesting that the heart and the kidneys are becoming weak. The intestine is often damaged. Infact, the Royal college of surgeons said…DEATH BEGINS SLOWLY BUT SURELY IN THE INTESTINE. Every parent should discourage junk food at home and should never tire of focusing the family, however old and independent the children may be on The Ceation of the diet The Creator gave to mankind to nurture their bodies in health and to nurse it in sickness.

We stand again for the upteenth time before a picture of a hopefully-better Nigeria glittering in the horizon and beckoning on us. It will not come to us. We have to go to it. This picture is of the Nigeria of our dreams, of Nigeria as it could be. Because they all thought they were all-wise, military president Ibrahim Gbadamoshi Babangida (IBB), like his civilian successors, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan and, lately, Muhammadu Buhari, failed to lead this nation to the promised Land. They all ran their shows with small kitchen cabinets which soon overpowered them and consumed whatever energy and vision they thought they had. Like Pilate’s wife, Aisha Buhari warned her husband of the do-gooders. But he silenced her and threw her into” the kitchen and the other room”. I hope that president-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as president, will learn from the mistakes of his predecessors. If he does not, Nigerian nightmares, such as poverty, mass unemployment, psychosomatic diseases and untimely deaths will continue to flourish.

 Mistakes 

One of the mistakes of Tinubu’s predecessors was that they failed to have a 360 degrees handle on each of Nigeria’s major menacing problems and possible solutions to them. Thus, government was conducted on “fire brigade basis”, always plodding in the dark and never really emerging fully from a dark tunnel.

 In my view, obtaining a 360 degrees handle on national questions is best done through presidential commissions. This column advised President Buhari of this. But he may be forgiven if he paid not much attention to it because his health got the better part of him in the early days of his administration. Vice President  Yemi Oshibajo would hàve helped him. But, as First Lady Aisha Buhari said, before she took her bow from the State House and hibernated in Dubai, a powerful “mafia” had hijacked the president. Even Bola Ahmed TInubu, who helped the president to power, was locked out. It must have taken “village intelligence” and political sagacity  for Tinubu to have refrained from voicing public opposition to some failings of the Buhari administration at that time and  during the political campaigns on which, vicariously, he was caught in the Buhari cob webs.

 Commissions

The incoming president may design a totally new roadmap for Nigeria with a presidential commission for each national question, and a presidential review commission which will help him to review the performances of his ministers every quarter. Presidential commissions will examine over a time frame problems facing Nigeria in their respective sectors and provide solutions to them. The president can formulate the solutions into an agenda which the ministers will be obliged to implement. A Presidential review commission will monitor implementation of the agenda. Ministers who fall below par over two consecutive quarters will be shown the door. Gone would be the days ministers bungled and bungled but still kept their jobs. This project will cost money, no doubt. The critics will even wonder if it will not sideline the National Assembly. The critics can be told handsome handshaskes between ministers and law makers crippled oversight functions of the assembly. If they didn’t, how come the Armed Forces couldn’t fight terrorist ,bandits and insurgents until recently when they were re-armed and motivated? How come huge investments in electricity generation and supply haven’t yielded commensurate dividends? How come crude oil is stolen in the oil fields and foreigners are illegally mining and exporting gold?

 Fortunately for  him, Tinubu is never afraid of spending money. He spends money to make more money than he spends. That is the story of Lagos State for eight years and of the legacy which he left behind and has continued to make Lagos State the Leader State in Nigeria. If, for example, he throws money at a presidential commission on energy, poverty,and through that Nigeria can produce more energy than it needs and export the rest, would that not be better than stoçkpling money for the purpose of befooling the electorate four years after with savings  and savings and savings which added no value to Nigeria’s family, social, commercial and industrial well being? The experts would meet, dust the problems up and suggest solutions. We are informed that perfection comes in the union of ideas. When every national question is on the table, face up, and addressed as such, there is transparency.Do we not remember that darkness has no hiding place in the light?

Shonekan

On November 27, 1996, military despot General Sanni Abacha made former UAC Nigeria chairman Ernest Shonekan, chairman of a 250-member vision 2010 committee to tell  him how Nigeria  can become a world power  in 14 years( 2010). The  committee sub divided itself into 13 work groups, each group charting a route out of a huge, dark tunnel. But many of them were neither original thinkers and players in the sectors they tried to design road maps for. 27 years after the committee’s inauguration and 13 years after 2010, Nigeria still wallows and grows in the dark.The vision 2020 was rowdy and dabbled into subjects in which many of its members had neither intuitive nor intellectual competence. What he ought to have done was to make the experts tell the nation what they need to bring Nigeria at par with expert sectors in countries which had the mastery of expertise in various sectors.This time around, there could be Presidential commissions for security, agriculture, education, energy,transportation, forestry, health, telecommunications, manufacturing, youth, social welfare, policing, drug abuse, solid minerals. etc.

Civil Servants

Proceeding with these templates, the civil service will be purely civil or public service. Nigeria will have a goal in every sector and a vision, always, of such a grand develop skills and objectives to achieve that goal. Chief Awolowo did it in the Western Region. That is why the South West region today is the most developed of Nigeria’s six geo-political regions. Never mind that Olusegun Obasanjo, as both military and civilian president, came from the South West. This region does not accept him as its leader and did not back him up. He did not believe in Chief Awolowo and other South West leaders, and he has continued to work against them.

    The President

 A president should not be afraid of brainstorming for ideas through presidential commissions. Working through the commissions makes him humble himself before the nation as running an open and inclusive administration, as a person who acknowledges thereby that he is not Mr Know all. He does not have to fear that the government will be highjacked from him. Power is not his. It derives from the people, he is a servant of as a gift from their Creator to Whom all Powers belong. It is recognised, though, that being the one entrusted with power for four years,he cannot abdicate power as he cannot also misuse it. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was on top of this game. He was knowledgeable and visionary. He once told us he was not better than any of us, irrespective of the accolades we all showered on him. He said the difference between him and us was that , when we were under the blue and red light of club houses at night, he was contemplating the problems of the land and finding solutions to them.

So, working through a commission, Chief Awolowo was not like a lamb in the slaughter house, naive or uninformed or prone to being misled.

He always knew where he was heading, and only wanted the bare bones or the skeleton fleshed up for him. This was what the  likes of  Prof Oluwasanmi and Professor Sam  Aluko  did for him with the pounds, shillings, and pennies from cocoa sales.

Bola Tinubu appears like Chief Awolowo to be tough  going. Politically, he has crossed a forest of hinderances Chief Awolowo did not cross. He has given a hint that he would name his ministers within one month. It took Buhari six months to do this in 2015 and two months in 2019. If TInubu accepts the idea of Presidential commissions, they may have long life spans, advising the government about any divergence from goal, reconciling differences as exigencies may dictate and developing new agendas for the future.

Igbo, Kanu

What I am not certain of is if Bola Tinubu would like to tackle the Igbo and Nnamdi Kanu questions through third parties such as a presidential commission or personally, and if he would like to do this within one month. I believe it is better for him to do this personally and within one month while the 10th National Assembly is settling down and before the ministers take their seats. The political sea and ocean are calmer at this time. He may presage a visit to Igboland with a visit to Catholic Archbishop Kukah , a leading critic of his muslim-muslum ticket. From a visit to Archbishop Kukah, a president Tinubu may head for Igboland, to the state of Nnamdi Kanu, Anambra. Should he go with Kanu? Oh yes. But under cover. Security people know what that means. He would return with Kanu to Aso rock or to Lagos the next day. And, while speculations are at their peak, he would discreetly send Kanu back to Kenya and, from there,  back to England. This should help to open up the South-East for a resolution of the Igbo question. Fences will have to be mended with anti Igbo forces who want Kanu and the Igbos to carry the cans of endsars youth revolt which almost entombed Nigeria.

 The Police

This is where Iam headed. I do not like soldiers always called in to resolve civil disturbances such as kidnapping, terrorism and banditry. The police force is capable of resolving them if it is well trained, armed and motivated. The military should be hidden from the view of other nations, so they are not easily sized up. My father was a colonial policeman (1945-1979), so I should know what Iam talking about as someone who grew up in police barracks for 28 years. Police training nowadays is too short and there are fewer refresher courses. Police barracks are dirty. I doubt if there are weekly barracks inspection anymore. Discipline has sagged. Some smoke Indian hemp in their uniforms amidst hoodlums in street  joints. In my days as a barracks resident, police wives were not permitted to sell items such as toiletries, milk or sugar and tea at home. They  ran  rented shops outside the barracks. Their husbands were investigated for how the investment came about. The mess or the canteens, one for officers  the other for other ranks, were the official business houses. But what do you find in police barracks nowadays? Pepper soup joints frequented by the big boys of society the police should keep under watch!

Tinubu’s Promise

During the campaigns, Bola Tinubu said Nigeria needed about two million policemen . But some people quickly shut him up while others apologised for a slip of tongue, saying that he meant a smaller number. In my view, we should be looking at about five million policemen. We need not worry about financing. The system will be self financing.

I proceed from the lessons we should learn from mother nature. The average adult human body has about 100 trillion cells. Cells of the immune system are comparable in cell mass to those of the liver and of the brain. Immune deficiency implies disease or death. Nigeria is “diseased” because of policing deficiency. It is doubtful if we have more than 500,000 policemen to police 200 million citizens. That is about one policeman to about 400 citizens. That was why the police force was literally liquidated by the endsars youth revolt, irrespective of their arms. Given Nigeria’s insecurity experiences today, we need young men and women for policing in the following areas

1) REGULAR POLICE

2) FOREST POLICE

3). HIGHWAY POLICE

4).NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICE

5).AIRPORT POLICE

6). SEA POLICE

7). TRAFFIC POLICE.

THE GENERAL POLICE will remain in charge of offices in police stations, more of which require upgrading,-and will attend to general police duties.

HIGHWAY POLICE fascinates me. It is because we do not have them that kidnappers abduct travellers into the forests. This special police force will govern all highways in the country. They will be different from the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) , a traffic police on the highways at best. I imagine about 200,000 vehicles travel everyday on the lagos-Ibadan expressway and about the same number on the Lagos- Badagry expressway. Lately, we have been hearing of kidnappings on these roads, as we do hear on the Shagamu-Ijebu-Ode-Benin Road. If every vehicle on the Lagos- Ibadan expressway pays about N200 for highway policing, it will provide #(200,000 x 200 )which equals N40 million naira everyday or 1.2 billion naira every month. Of this conservative toll, N200 million may be reserved for road maintainance, while N800 million goes to the highway police and N200 million is kept in reserve. We were promised police patrol and security on this road when it was commissioned by the Obasanjo military administration in August 1978. Today, N200 per vehicle is incomparable with the lives of the occupants of that vehicle. We can replicate what we do on Lagos-Ibadan expressway nationwide, especially for Abuja  Kaduna expressway.

Forest Policing is as important as policing towns and cities. It is because the forests were ignored the hoodlums, kidnappers, terrorists and bandits took them over. Why can huge farms not grow out of them as this column has been canvassing? States which wish to re settle Nigerian (not foreign) normadic cattle rearers in ranches can do this . Big businesses will spring up in the forest towns. Canning companies will be there. So will be sellers of feed for the cows. Schools and hospitals and restaurants as well as recreational centers  will come. The forest police will be there. Residents and companies will pay policing  taxes. As I suggested in 2015 and 2019, Nigeria can produce billions of rabbits from the forests every months. I witnessed such a forest activity in Senegal in 2006. There were no jobs for young persons. Women were prostituting.  Vivian Wade, french wife of president Abdoulaye Wade, took idle women to  forests  hostels . They grew cucumbers, cabbage, tubers, fruits, vegetables consumed in Senegal and  France, earnings fabulous incomes  and periodically holidaying in town. We neglected our own forests. As nature abhors a vaccum, ignoble persons took them over and are menacing us. Aren’t we at fault?

NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICE is a big deal. Regular police are overstretched and under equipped and sluggishly respond to emergencies. The neighbourhood police will have good records about many residents. Today, the street junctions and corners are dens of drug sellers and users because policing is not effective there. China fought two opium wars, the first from 1839 to 1842 with Great Britain and from 1856-1860 against Britain France and the United States. The Europeans were dumping opium, a narcotic drug, on China for money, and China was trying to shut its ports. Today, we rely only on the NDLEA to fight drug trafficking in Nigeria. The NDLEA is  doing a good job under brig Buba Marwa (rtd). But it will appear largely limited to airports and seaports. Codeine and tramadol and other narcotics from India and other countries still find their ways to Nigerian neighbourhoods . What about the street corners and road junctions where telephone recharge card businesses are camoflague businesses for selling drugs of all kinds, including those binding in biscuits, sweets,  body sprays, drinks, chewing gumes, Laundary soaps? The neighbourhood police can mark out the drug dens for the NDLEA which can then carry out location sweeps. But is the NDLEA well staffed for this policing task? Prison expansion, like the setting up of the rehabilitation centers, may be in the forests, will have to go hand in hand with this drive. The inmates of rehab centers may be trained in all sorts of skills in the food chain, to help Nigeria expand farm yield and banish food poverty.

PORT POLICING must be stepped up. Guns and other contraband  are flooding in. Sea Ports are growing in number. Lekki has come up. Badagry is coming up. Bola Tinubu promised Akwa Ibom a sea Port. Port Harcourt would want its own. Calabar and warri are beckoning. So has been Ilaje in Bariga, Lagos, since the 1962 political crisis in Western region upset chief Awolowo’s plan to make it a sea port. Every state is struggling to have its own airport. Will there be no need to police them?

TRAFFIC POLICING grows with population growth and population movements. Rail transportation is growing . We have witnessed assaults on trains. Abroad, there is police present at boarding stations and on the trains while Artificial Intelligence monitors the tracks

Conclusion

For want of space, I would like to conclude here this interesting subject. For me, the son of a policeman (Samuel Adebayo Kusa NO 7053), employing five million persons into the various police forces will drastically reduce unemployment, address youth restiveness, make the population more secure, reduce food poverty and prevent the involvement of the military in menial security matters which may distract them from their expert preoccupation , which is war against external aggressors.

For how long we had been telephone acquaintances before he suddenly passed on February 7, 2023, I cannot recall. I can put it, though, at about 10 years. We never met. He lived in Aba, I in Lagos. He called me his in-law because some of my sisters are married to Ibos. I, too, call him my in-law because some of his sisters married Yorubas. There was hardly any day he was not the one to call to start the day’s conversation, which hovered around politics, his health as a colon cancer patients, his helpful friends, his business and  challenges with his extended family. 

 In politics , we were on two sides of a cross-fire. He was 100 per cent a  Peter Obi follower, and would be glad if I was. He was one of my many  Ibo  friends who disliked traits I did not like in some Ibos who were giving all Ibo bad testimonials. My in-laws are good Ibos. So was Dr. Obisike Erondu. The  traits of bad Ibos which may have consumed  Dr Erondu included territorial ambitions not only in Nigeria but everywhere they went such as South Africa, Benin Republic, Cot d’ Ivoire,Ghana, China, India, Dubai e.t.c. These bad ambassadors of their  people are aggressive,coveteous, domineering, clannish, unaccommodating and not given to peaceful co- existence even on “foreign land”. Every nationality has its fair share of such persons.They become rotten eggs which despoil a whole basket of eggs if they become the active flag bearers of  a people and the pure stock does not call them to order.

 Thus, whenever Dr Erondu cast his health challenges aside, sought my votes for Peter Obi, and requested that I give him the telephone numbers of Yoruba politicians, he could speak with. I told him that Obi’s followers, not Obi himself,  would be  Obi’s  problem not only  in the Southwest but in the North as well. And it happened!

Hospice

I played the role of a hospice worker in his life. The hospice worker eases a terminally ill person into the world beyond this one, making him or her know no fear of a transition and, as much as is possible, keeps the dreadful health challenge out of the thought. Many hospice workers are too committed to the rules of their profession, as I found in the first book on this subject I bought in the 1980s when my maternal grandmother developed cancer in the right breast. I couldn’t tell her a lie about it. Then, I knew little about how to help to prolong the life of a cancer challenged person, using diet, nutritional supplements, herbs and other therapies. I frankly told her the doctors wished to remove the breast. She was about 76, a passionate Christian of the Christ Apostolic sect, and said she would rather return to her Maker the way she was born,  not butchered  or multilated. Of course, her references were to the earthly mud body, not to her soul. The difference between both are not well understood by the Christian Church which, accordingly, does not inveigh its adherents with the appropriate knowledge.  She thanked me for  being frank,  and  I prepared her for the beyond, like a dutiful hospice that  I was trying to be.  

I guess I did the job better with my father. For when he passed at about 3.30a.m in a hospital in Obanikoro, Lagos, on August 26, 1998, a Wednesday,  he told  me in a dream about  20 minutes later he had gone. Then,   I lived in Awuse Estate, Opebi, Ikeja. He  reminded  me to not forget everything we discussed, including his funeral the first  Saturday after he passed. He  took my hand in one of his, placed my step mother’s on top of it, before he said those parting words.  I prepared to  head immediately for Obanikoro but my wife, for security reasons in those days, advised that I wait till about 6am. By 5.30am,my brother, Yinka, and the wife of one of my father’s tenants came to break the news to me. I did as he wished. And, by 6am on the day after the interment, I went to the village cemetery to wish him to not abide in  the grave till a Judgement Day but to seek help from the helpers in the beyond he would find always nearby, and continue his journey through Creation, always getting involved in joyful activities, never looking back to the earth, to  avoid becoming earth bound as is symbolically and pictorially expressed in the Bible story of Lot’s wife and the mound of salt.

Obisike

I was glad this man was surrounded  in Aba by persons equipped with this knowledge of the after-life. He had another insightful friend, Clement Agwu who lived in Port Harcourt and became a health discussant with me through him. Through Mr Agwu this week, I learned that the great “twist”dance hero of the 1960s and early 70s, ELvis Presley, who came to Ibadan for a performance, had 75kg of impacted( stone) fecal waste in his intestine during autopsy. This was the combined weight of about six or seven babies at birth!. The lesson in that is  that we all must look after the health of our intestines. I do not know how Dr  Erondu look after his. But he bravely fought colon cancer and offered himself as a case study to all his friends. Not only did he change his diet, he undertook various  detoxification programmes. He was a man endowed with a sharp intellect, the crown of which were three PhDs. He was a Veterinary doctor. He ran a poultry, bred guards dogs and snakes for their poison which he sold abroad. By that account, I always teased him , I would not attend his thanksgiving service in the church or visit him at home  whenever he got well because snakes and I were no friends. He also had a great deal of interest in snail farming.

Cancer

The cancer was brutal. It blocked the colon passage and constipated him unless he took  laxatives.  He liked a particular brand. Whenever he took it, the laxative “pushed” out the congestion and, also, opened up bleeding spots in the tract. He bled alot with each evacuation. From our conversations, he learned he would be losing electrolytes as well and that too much loss of them could make him faint or die.Thus, he began a routine intake of ORT salts from the pharmacy after every laxative therapy. He backed this up with fruits and vegetables juice intake, avoiding the sugary or sweet ones, since cancers use sugars to grow. Once in a while, he took a blood transfusion administered by a nurse who lived nearby in his housing estate.

Surgery

Dr  Erondu declined surgery that would divert evacuation from his lower abdomen to a bag which would hang outside his body for the rest of his life. He wished to become functional again as a parent and head of his family, professionally, in business and politic. He detested surgery  because, inevitably,  it would involve chemotherapy, which sometimes kills rather than save life. On top of these travails, he engaged in extended family inheritance battles which sapped his energy.

Family

His grand father was a land owner. When the grand old man passed, he left his eldest child in charge of his property. By Ibo tradition, the eldest child will share the property as he liked among other male siblings. Dr  Erondu’s father was the eldest child of his grand father. According to Ibo tradition, he shared the property among his male siblings. But one of his younger brothers did not leave their father’s house for his own. Dr Erondu’s father soon died, living his eldest child Obisike in charge of his property. That was where the problem began. Dr  Erondu  could not get  his uncle to vacate his father property. The old man saw the property  as his father’s. Dr  Erondu felt belittled that he could not protect his father inheritance. The extended family in imbroglio worsen when his uncle died and his cousins insisted on burying their father’s remains in the property.This, finally, would make the property an extended  family monument. Dr Erondu could not stand this. So, he hired a lawyer to obtained from a court an interlocutory injunction to stop the interment. 

In this scenario, an African man of science and of letters may begin to succumb to phobias of its roots in the  “village people” syndrome. Thus,  Dr Erondu fought not only a physical battle but a psychological war and phychic engagement all rolled together, congesting him with negative energy.

Try as I did to take Dr Erondu out of this case was not easy or successful. He was fighting a war on three fronts. One front was the tumour which blocked his colon. Another was the home front where he wished he could once again take direct and affective charge of his family as not only the bread winner, but, also, as the effective role model. Both aspirations are the goals of an Ibo husband and parent and pride when he achieves them. 

Finally, there was the feeling that he would betray not only  his father  but  Ibo tradition as well if he failed to protect or properly sort out the inheritance question.

Passage

These were the forces, which continually wore down this gentleman. On February 7, 2023, we lost touch. When I did not hear from him as usual, I began to telephone him. When I heard no reply, I though he could be in hospital, and called his daughter who was on holiday. Every where was mute. Then, one day this month, my phone rang. It was his number. Before I would listen to him, I charged:

 “Why have you not been replying my calls?” A woman’s voice answered. I expected the worst.

 “He has gone,” she announced. Wa-oh, wa-oh, wa-oh”, was all I could be saying!.

Dr Erondu’s passage is a transition I cannot help remembering. He was, to me already a brother. Any day he tried something new and his strength returned, I rejoiced.  My prayer is that, wherever he is, he would learn to put matters of this earth behind him and awaken to joyful life in the hopefully more beautiful sphere of existence in the Universe where he is privileged to experience Life. He may have been a victim of the traits I told him were prevalent in Peter Obi’s followers.

Good bye, Doc.

In the night of March 7, 2023, I woke up three times with nothing in particular to do in the small room. Later, I realised  I had gone to bed with  a heavy heart. It was the third rowdy night in two months.

The first time, I had been uneasy about a health-seeking gentleman in Aba, Dr Obisike Erondu (see article below). The second passage was that of the wife of my best man. The last transition, which kept getting me up from sleep concerned Hon. Samson Bamidele Baderinwa, whose real names many people did not know because, to almost every-one, he was …Mr White.

In the afternoon of March 7, someone who thought I heard of his departure called me and, before saying anything else, greeted me…E Ku Oro Enia. This Yoruba greeting acknowledges all the labour to tidy up the affairs a departed person left behind, including the funeral. How the intellect overwhelmed my intuition still surprises me. For, rather than ask the appropriate question, I asked him if he was coping well with  the cash squeeze. He thought my reply odd. I told him, O kari  aiye, which meant the money shortage was everywhere. I sat right only after he asked:

“Have you not  heard about Mr. White?”

“What happened”? I asked.

“He has gone,” he replied.

 The phone almost dropped from my  hand. I had seen him at home the week before. He had been struggling and coping with geriatric health challenges, until, lately, when he developed complications. He had become home bound for some months, save for his outing for the wedding on December 30, 2022, about 67 days before he passed, for the wedding of Esther Omolade, his foster daughter. Hon. Baderinwa danced with her and went round to greet and to thank the guests. I guess that, like me, many of the guests believed the worst was over. Little did many of us realise we were seeing him for the last time.

Hon. Baderinwa was a humble, quite, people-oriented, family loving man, a community worker and builder, attributes he acquired and developed from diversified upbringing. He lived with a household of about 15 persons in a bungalow he built in Oko-GRA Scheme1.They included his wife, Felicia, and four children, Boluwatife, Taiwo, Kehinde, (all young women) and Michael. He came from a similar household. He was one of six children of his mother and three others by his step-mother. They  grew up together and, in adult life, he gave them  his back and shoulders to climb on. Such family bonding is rare in the new Nigerian society in which several family have become atomised.

The life of every one of us  is like a fight of stairs in which each rung of the stairway is a stepping stone to the next, forming a rampart to the top. So was it for this gentleman. He struggled through “O” Level education and, from there, to a catering school, which prepared him for a job in the catering department of the Lagos State Government Secretariat at Alausa, Ikeja. Many people would think that was a menial job. But, as our forefather’s admonish us  Ko si eni  to  mo ibiti ori nba ese e re ( No one knows where the head is headed with the legs). For the young Baderinwa would later end up in the Governor’s Office, though not as Governor, but as the caterer trusted well enough to take full responsibility for whatever the governor eats and drinks. That meant the governor’s life, like those of his guests he invited to breakfast, lunch or dinner or cocktails, was in his hands. The job called for intelligence, dedication, loyalty, thoroughness, indefatigability and trustworthiness, among other noble human qualities. Had his life journey not prepared him, step by step, to be  responsible, humble and trustworthy, Hon. Baderinwa would have not ended up working with three military governors and three civilian governors. One of them recommended him for the award of the Member of  The  Order  oF The Niger ( M.O.N), one of Nigeria’s national honours.

Among Hon. Baderinwa Governors bosses were Navy Captain Mike Akhigbe (August 1986- July1988), Col. Raji Rasaki(July 1988-July 1992), Sir Michael Otedola(Jan.1992-Nov. 1993),Col. Olagunsoye Oyinlola( Nov. 1993-Aug.1996), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (May 1999-May 2007) and Mr Babatunde Fashola (May 2007-May 2011).

From his vantage position in the Governor’s Office, Hon. Baderinwa helped many politicians in Agege-Ifako Ijaya Local Government Area achieve their political ambitions. He also secured GRA Scheme 1 against armed robbery attacks of which he and his family were victims.

In the second  tenure of Governor Fashola, Bola Ahmed Tinubu recommended Hon. Baderinwa for M.O.N. honour, and encouraged him to retire from work and run, under the APC, to represent Ifedore Constituency of Ondo State in the House of Representatives. He won, and represented the constituency for four years (2015-2019).

For any one who does not know how Hon. Baderinwa came to be known as Mr White and not by his official name, the story  goes back to Sir Michael Otedola, one of the governors he served. At work, Hon. Baderinwa dress code was all-white. Any time the governor needed his services, he would ask the aides around ” call  me “Omo White yen” ( Call me that White man). The name stuck, till this day.

Survivors

Mr Baderinwa left a wife and four children in a large household. His wife is Felicia Oriyomi(nee Ogunpahin of Ikorodu).Their children are Boluwatife, who is studying for a higher degree in Anatomy.Twin girls,Taiwo and Kehinde.Taiwo studies  Nutrition and Dietetics. Kehinde studies Public Health. It seems like only yesterday that Boluwatife and I discussed the subject of her degree thesis and I encouraged Taiwo to study Nutrition and Dietetics.

She was under pressure from some of her uncles to study something else. Then, I told her of the famous statement of Dr  Thomas Edison that “the nutritionist of today will be the doctor of tomorrow. Dr Edison went on to say:  “Doctor of the future will give no medicine but will entrust his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” I knew joy when Taiwo trod the path of Dr Edison.

On behalf of Hon. Baderinwa family, his eldest child, Boluwatife says: “Dear Daddy, on March 7, 2023, Taiwo, Kenny, Michael and I watched you take your last breath as the doctors did everything they could to save your life. God knows we would have given anything in the world to still have you here with us.These past few days have been the toughest period of our lives. I’m yet to believe that you aren’t here anymore to call me ‘Tife’.

“We’re grateful that we got to spend your last moments with you and we’ll cherish those memories forever.

“Taiwo, Kenny, Michael and I have been really strong for Mummy. She misses you a lot and won’t stop talking about you, We all miss you.

“I pray that the Lord accepts your soul. Till we meet to part no more, you’ll always be in my heart.

 I love you forever,

Boluwatife”.

Good bye, Honourable  Samson Badmidele Baderinwa a.k.a Mr White.

Happily, the lamps of peace are gradually lighting up the twilight aftermaths of the 2023 general election, with the political thunderstorms abating. About two weeks ago, I found myself hooked on a Radio Lagos programme. A pharmacist was trying to explain the differences between orthodox or hospital medicines and natural medicines. It was a Yoruba programme. As is often the case with such interviewees, he lacked not the acumen, but sufficient vocabulary to expertly sail through. He gave me the idea for this column to, with all respects due to him, fill up some gaps.

The pharmacist correctly outlined both medicines. Orthodox medicine is pharmaceutical medicine. It does not address root causes of health challenges but merely suppresses the “cries” of the cells or organs, such as pain or excessive daytime sleepiness, that something wrong is going on. Besides, it localises the suppression.  In excessive daytime sleepiness (sleep attack)  or insomnia (inability to sleep at night), the pharmaceutical drug forces the brain to awake or to sleep, as the case may be, rather than addressing what is forcing  it to sleep or making it to not sleep when it should. In other words, if you are knocking off during the day or cannot sleep at night, Orthodox medicine will single out your brain for treatment and force it to obey you. Natural medicine attends to you by looking at your entire body for whatever is amiss and  missing anywhere, and  gently strengthen the wobbling organs by giving them what they need to probably do their jobs.  It is not  a task master which forces workers striking for unpaid salary back too work; rather, it pays them their unpaid salaries, probably with a bonus as icing on the cake. This is why it is rare to have dangerous side effects in natural medicines.

From his clinical experience as a practitioner of natural medicine, the pharmacist gave us the example of one of his patients. . She saw him after many pharmaceutical prescriptions failed to help her to sleep well. He discovered  that she had surgery to be delivered of her last baby, the third by that process. Then, he concluded that the surgeon’s  knife  interfered with  the right flow of energy from her womb to her brain. He treated her by unblocking the blockage with gentle hand massages of the energy flow lines, and she became able to sleep again.

Such was a natural  treatment I learned about 20 years ago at a seminar of The Guardian newspaper co-sponsored by Sheraton Hotels, Lagos on reflex zone therapies. A woman who had just been delivered of a baby could not produce breast  milk , despite the consumption of pharmacy drugs. Eventually, she saw a reflex zone therapist who discovered that she received drips on both arms. Soon after, the baby was born. In  the language of and visualisation of the therapist, energy flow to and from the breasts had been disrupted. Thus, the breasts did not have the adequate natural stimulation to produce milk. They began to do so only after the therapist had massaged reflex zones on the breasts in the feet, arms and elsewhere, unblocking  blockages.

This is the realm of energy medicine, a portion of NATURAL MEDICINE. Other forms of natural medicine include, but are not limited to, nutrition, detoxification(for example, high colonic irrigation, organic Enema coffee etc), precious stones therapy, flower essence therapy, juicing, oxygenation( hyperbaric oxygen chamber), anti oxidation, hydrotherapy, colour therapy, incantation, hand laying/ prayer and faith healing, reflex zone therapy etc.

In respect of the woman who could not sleep well, the pharmacist relied on energy medicine. The practitioners believe that we human beings are not the physical bodies in which we move about, driving our cars, flying aeroplanes or fighting wars. We are not the bodies which Pooh- Pooh into the water closet of our toilet or on which we wear beautiful dresses after painting our faces with cream and powder or brushing our teeths or  combing our hairs. The practioners  believe that we human beings are Spirit beings from the Spirit world who “live” in  earth bodies during our sojourn on earth for a purpose. We have had of Angels and of the world of Angels. Spirits are as real as Angels. The Spirit world  lies immediately below the world of Angels and is often called PARADISE. So we are not are Bodies which will die some day and be burried in graves while we, the owners, spirit beings, continue to exist and move on with our existence, like Mosses and Elijah who appeared with the Lord Jesus at his TRANSFIGURATION.   The Spirit is the ” BREATHE OF LIFE” in the earth  body. The Spirit, therefore, animates the body or drives it.  When the Spirit is happy, its radiates joy and happiness to the body, and the body looks calm, energetic, fresh and young. But when the Spirit is sad and sorrowful, the  body appears wrinkled, washed up and old. Thus,we learn that the Earth body has no life of its own and must fall away in earthly death when the  in-dwelling  human Spirit discards it when it is old, diseased, in a state of shock or malnourished.  Therefore, the earthly body is like a garment which the  Spirit can put outside at any time as we pull off our work or party clothes  at bed. The  Spirit is the “breath of Life” in the mud body. It provides the mud body  living energy from different locations known as the  SEVEN CHAKRAS and distributes the energy uninterruptedly through defined pathways or channels known as the MERIDIANS.

This therapy teaches us that the five fingers and toes are not decoration but integral to the energy supply and distribution network. From the head,five energy routes emerge in the left and in the right hemispheres of the brain.They track  down the neck to either shoulder and, from there, down the arms to the fingers,and down the trunk and the lower limbs to the toes. On their journeys to the fingers and to the toes, these energy routes  pass through various organs which are fed by them. Thus,  a blockage of energy flow in one route would mean energy  deprivation  or loss in the organs it  passes through, be it an eye, teeth, bones, the heart, the lungs, kidneys, the liver or  the circulatory and  reproductive systems. Additional to this wondrous design is  the knowledge that one sperm cell  which fertilized an egg,  together with the egg,  produced about 100 trillion cells in the average adult human body which, though differentiated in location and function, are connected by a genetic code and wired to terminals in the hands and feet and other special parts of the body. When these “terminals” are massaged, the cells and  the organs in which they work positively respond because energy easily flow through them.In the case of a woman  who could not sleep well despite the use of Pharmaceuticals sleep inducers which “force” the brain to sleep  rather than resolve the root cause(s) of her insomnia, the  pharmacist descovered  on investigation that she was delivered of her third baby, as were  the   other two, by surgery. Obviously, the Surgeon’s knives must have caused energy blockages. That is why some men  become  impotent or suffer from rectile dysfunction after hemorrhoids surgery. I witnessed a case in which the breast were not producing milk. The herb sage and  motherwort failed  to induce them. Apparently, this was a case of energy blockage. The woman had  drips in both arms in hospital, and the needles prinks may  have blocked or impeded  etheric energy flow from or to the breast. There  is a spot on the back of each hand which can be massaged as a reflex zone to determine the health of each  breast. Many adult women forcibly withdraw their hand during such routine examination in the back of the palm because, simultaneously, they feel pain in the affected palm and  breast.  Where the menstrual cycle is misbehaving, there are  places in the wrist and in the ankles which may be massaged for beautiful results. This is contraindicated in pregnancies, for obvious reasons.

Armed with knowledge such as the foregoing, there is a tendency for Natural medicine practioners to assume orthodox medicine  is inconsequential and  the practioners not  valuable in the health and sick care systems.  Orthodox doctors by virtue of their  meticulous training are the  experts in anatomy and physiology and protocols which save life in emergency. With this notion, I do not under value  Natural Medicine in emergencies. I once witnessed an emergency situation  in which a natural therapist revived a woman who fainted. She was in a Lagos apartment where she and her friends were commensurating with the family of  a thirty- years old man whose remains were interned hours earlier. She  couldn’t beat the emotional pressure, slumped and fainted.  There was no doctor around. The “prayer warriors”  sprung to work,not realising that the noise  could compound the  problems. Natural therapist  sat one foot down and asked some-one to do the same with the other foot and do exactly what he was doing. When the foot  is sat down, big toe up, heel  down, we observed shape of the body for  basic reflex  zone therapy purposes.  The big toe represents the “head”. The “neck”is where the toe joins the foot. The “Spine” is the trajectory from the neck down to the heel. The heel is the “colon”.  Heels that are prone to infections may be indicating already infected colons. Thus,  people who suffer all sorts of fungal infections on their heels should care for their colons before it is too late. Oral thrush, that white patch on the tongue which makes the pink  colour of the tongue only partially visible,  or not visible,  may be indicating gastro-intestinal problems at various stages of fungal colonisation..

The therapist began to massage the under side of the  big toe right down to the “neck” zone, interchanging once in a while with the other big toe. The same was done for the two thumbs and appropriate zones in the palms and in the feet. Ten minutes seemed like eternity. She opened her eyes. We all rejoiced.  How would it  have  sounded that a guest died in the home of a bereaved family on the day the remains  of his  beloved one were interned?.

Headaches

Doctors throws pain-killers at headaches. But that is not to say that is all they do for headache. The trouble is that they see local inflammation and pain as the major  culprit in this case.  One Israeli man’s headache, which would not go away,  was  probed by scanning his brain.  What looked like a  tumour was found. But when the brain  was opened up, a baby tapeworm was found nestling there. It was possible an egg scaped digestion in the stomach and intestine and found its way, through the blood, to the brain.

In natural medicine, too much blood or too little blood in the brain or spasms of  the  soft muscles of blood vessels are thought as possible culprits. The sufferer may dip a face towel in cold water and press it against the nape of the  neck. This is to  constrict blood vessels and reduce blood influx if too much blood is the problem. Simultaneously, the feet are soaked  in warm water to dilate blood vessels for them to hold more blood, thereby reducing excess blood flow to the brain. Sometimes, the blood is too thick and the  osmotically  dehydrates brain tissue, causing  pain. This calls for the culture of drinking water about 30 minutes before a meal, two to three hours after, in-between meals or when the stomach is empty, before bed at night  and  on rising in the morning. Constipation may also cause headaches. The intestine is like a pit toilet. It produces all sorts of gases,  such as methane which may enter the blood circulation and irritate nerves in the brain. Hormonal imbalances,like chemicals in food , water, and  the air, may play a role as well.

There are many recipes for headaches in natural medicine. Herbs such valerian root, blue vervain,  skullcap and feverfew silence  nerve and muscle spasms.  So does Magnesium. Too much calcium and too  little magnesium may be a culprit. CONSTIPATION may arise because of dehydration,absence or insufficiency of fiber in the diet, deficiency of digestive enzymes or magnesium  or vitamin B1 ( thiamine) deficiency. Thiamine deficiency may cause incomplete carbohydrate metabolism, heaping pyruvic and lactic acids on the system. These acids irritate muscles and nerves.  Soluble fiber hastens transit time in the intestines. Insoluble fiber delays it and mops water. It is important to know which is Which. People who consume calcium for bone density but hardly add magnesium to the diet  may experience muscle lock-down in the intestine cause by excess calcium. This minerals contracts the nerves and muscles while magnesium relaxes them. Contraction and relaxation bring about Peristaltic motion which moves the bowels. Thiamine is important as the vitamin of muscles and nerves which are what keep contracting and relaxing to produce bowel motion. Where there is too much gas or foul smell in the intestine,  this may be reduced by taking activated charcoal  capsules or the powder in water. It absorbs  gases and toxins. In the alternative, the food grade ( not pest grade,please) Diatomaceous earth or DIATOM may be consider once in a while.   Organic coffee enema may be added to the therapy. It is not edible coffee. It is designed exclusively for detoxification to pull out toxins from the liver and intestines. It is even used in cancer therapy as a detoxifying agent.

Depression

Low self-esteem, grief, sadness, hatred, withdrawal are some of the symptoms. In the final analysis, they may  originate from  the in-dewelling Spirit. The physical body has no life of its own. The in-dewlling  spirit impacts  it for good or for ill. The body is incapable of experiencing joy or sorrow.That is why we speak of  being” in high  spirits”. In colour therapy, white, green, blue and violet may be calming and helpful. Yellow  may be  help the third chakra,where the soul connect with the body at the SOLAR PLEXUS. Red help, being the colour of the first chakra or ” groundedness” on earth,or of security where insecurity is the root of the problem. Can we ignore PURPLE, the colour of the Spirit?

Doctors often minimise the role  of diet to help the body  scope with or  to offset negative  spiritual impact on the body, and  believe only in anti-depressant drugs  which many of their patients despise from fear not only of addiction but, also,  because it may turn them into vegetables. Yet, the phosphate biochemic or cell(tissue) salts have been found to help stabilise many patients.  This comes from the recognition that isufficuency of certain nutrients in the brain due to whatever reasons may cause back firing of its biochemistry and normal functions. Several studies have shown  the important, also of the minerals magnesium and zinc. DOPAMINE does not exist in pharmaceutical drugs alone. It is in foodstuff. Recently, I learned from a young patient who is helping himself with dietary supplementation of his hospital drugs that he specifically went for  VELVET  BEANS because he discovered from antidepressants literature that  it was the richest- source of Dopamine in the plant kingdom.

 Many psychiatrists did not study nutrition and are not interested in it as natural medicine for anxiety, schizophrenia, panic attack, depression, fibromyalgia,low energy, poor  motivation and the likes of them. Yet many human and animal studies are suggesting that deficiencies of  brain neurotransmitters, largely caused by deficiencies of their basic building materials,  are the leading causes of brain dysfunction and malfunction.

 Mucuna Pruriens (elvet bean) is, for example, the most abundant food source of L-Dopa. This is the precursor (parent) of DOPAMINE, the “happy juice” of the brain which enhances sleep, improves mood and self esteem, apart from helping the body to produce large quantum of brain and other hormones, and to balance them. Velvet bean is seven  to ten  percent by weight of L-Dopa and other non-addictive psycho-active nutrients which beneficiary impact the brain. In several studies, velvet beans have been used two weeks on, one week off or  indefinitely without the negative  side effects of hospital medicine. In addition to its  brain calming benefits, which have made it useful in the treatment of even Parkinson’s  disease, velvet beans has been found to stimulate  the hypothalamus,a gland in the brain, to produce human growth hormone, (HGH). These hormones improve the texture and strength of muscles and support the production of testosterone, the male sex hormone, hormonal sufficiency and balance and mental balance. Many Asian countries now sell velvet beans products in their health food stores.Globally, natural medicine literature on the treatment and reversal of depression and other brain challenges are pointing to certain foods now known as “power food” for the brain. Among them are whey protein, pine pollen, chlorella, Nori (seaweed for iodine), vitamins and minerals, especially zinc and magnesium, Acetylcholine, lecithin, phosphatidylserine  (PS) fish oil, brain antioxidants and detoxifiers.  Space does not permit a discussion of clinical observations of the use of this dietary  nutrients in depression therapies, for example.

   We cannot exhaust the treasury troves of Mother Nature. The conversation will, therefore, continue from time to time.