The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Evil

  • Patriotic Nigerians must fight evil, says Osinbajo

    Patriotic Nigerians must fight evil, says Osinbajo

    Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has urged Nigerians who believe in pursuing the good of the nation to support President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration’s fight against evil.

    He spoke at the weekend in Fadan Kagoma, Kaduna State during the 2016 Khituk Gwong Day where he was the Special Guest of Honour.

    Osinbajo, in a statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, said in too many instances leaders from different areas of the nation’s life have tried to use religion and ethnicity to cause division in a bid to attain political and other selfish ends.

    “Sometimes political leaders use religion to divide, they use ethnicity to oppress the people,” the vice president said.

    A new Nigeria, he said, is now emerging that will include Christians, Moslems, people of all faiths and those who confess no faith.

    He said those Nigerians of the New Tribe are those who believe in truth, honesty and justice among other virtues that advance the right course for the country.

    He added: “This new Nigeria must be based on love for each other,” and must value integrity, Prof. Osinbajo declared stressing that it is indeed mandated in his own personal faith of Christianity to love everyone including “your enemy. ”

    He explained that Christians have to love those who hate them and despitefully use them, and even have to pray for their enemies.

    According to him, those who have been stealing from and looting the nation’s coffers are drawn from all ethnicity and faiths, but are united in their quest to steal.”

  • The evil of drug abuse

    The evil of drug abuse

    The University of Benin (UNIBEN) chapter of Anti-Drug Misuse and Abuse Programme (ADAMP) has sensitised youths of Uselu community in Benin City on the effects of drug abuse and alcohol. EZEKIEL EFEOBHOKHAN (500-Level Pharmacy) reports.

    The action was informed by their concern to save the vulnerable – the innocent young ones and the addicted elders. This was the aim of members of the Anti-Drug Misuse and Abuse Programme (ADAMP), who held a two-day campaign against mental illness.

    Members of the group are Pharmacy students of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) who are concerned about the increasing rate of drug and alcohol abuse in Uselu, a community close to the Ugbowo campus of the school.

    At a campaign held at AB Academic Centre to sensitise the children of the community, a teenager among the participants explained how his father usually abused him with alcohol. He said he would be given a half-filled cup of alcohol each time his father bought alcoholic drinks.

    “If you say alcohol can cause mental illness, do I stop drinking and buying alcohol for my Dad?” the pupil asked.

    Answering the question, ADMAP chairman, Isaac Ehimen, said young children are obliged to obey their parents but should resist being abused with alcohol. He said regular intake of alcohol could lead to addiction, stressing that the substance could lead to dysfunctional Central Nervous System (CNS) in young alcoholic drinkers.

    Isaac told the teenagers: “You can run any errand for your parents, but never accept alcohol from them if they offer you, because it destroys.”

    The Pharmacy students took their anti-drug campaign to Uselu Secondary School, where they spoke with a large number of pupils. Speaking, Austin Aigbagenode, an ADMAP member, described a child’s brain as tabula rasa, saying any habit picked by children at tender age would be difficult to drop as they grow up.

    He advised the pupils not to engage in taking harmful substances, such as marijuana, Indian hemp and alcohols, saying the abuse of the substances could lead to mental illnesses and other embarrassing effects. “Don’t allow any friend to tempt you into trying any substance for the first time. They may persuade you by telling all sort of stories, but never believe them as a lot of the cases of mental illnesses are currently caused by addiction to some of these substances,” he advised.

    The group took the campaign to other schools, with the aim to reach out to thousands of children in the community. At each event held, the session was usually ended with questions and answer. Gifts were also given to student, who participated in the discussion excellently.

    While addressing the pupils of Eagles College, president of Pharmaceutical Association of Nigerian Student (PANS), Benjamin Idiakhoa, encouraged them to only become addicted with their books and resist peer pressure to engage in act that could derail them from fulfilling their goals and future.

    Benjamin said the reason why many people suffer was not because of poverty, but because of bad companies and wrong choices. “You must be the first beneficiary of your success. Be serious with your studies, because it can take you anywhere in the world. Drinking alcohol and smoking harmful substances cannot lead you anywhere,” he said.

    Ehidiamen Olobor, another member of the group, said the objective of the campaign could be realised since teenagers were the target of the campaign.

    Praising the Pharmacy students, the proprietor of Eagles College, Phillip Imonlega  said he was highly pleased with the campaign strategy and gave optimism that the encounter with the pupils would make positive impact. He told the pupils: “These people who spoke to you today were once like you, if they had indulged in smoking and taking alcohol, they would not have been here today. Look at their way of life and try to be like them.”

    Maxwell Esebanmhen, a member of the group, hailed PANS and its president for supporting the campaign.

     

     

  • Almajiri: PMB please end this evil

    SIR: Destitute Children roaming the streets in Northern Nigeria are almost becoming a normal feature. The children commonly referred to as “Almajiri” derived from the Arabic word Al-Mahaajirun, which literally means, a learned scholar who propagates the peaceful message of Islam. Almajiri system has since outlived its purpose and has become a breeding ground for child begging and potential terrorist camps. The pupils who were meant to be trained to emerge as Islamic Scholars have now had to struggle to cater for themselves through begging rather than learning under the watch and supervision of the semi-illiterate Quranic teachers or Mallams who themselves lacked the requisite financial and moral support and use the system as a means of living rather than a way of life.

    Deprived of a normal descent upbringing, Almajiri children who are usually little boys, are the direct product and consequence of polygamy, broken homes and lack of adequate family planning by a large chunk of northerners who sees family planning as against their religion and culture. Almajiri children grow up in the streets without the love, care and guidance of his parents; His struggle for survival exposes him to rape (homosexuality and pedophilia), used as a slave, brainwashed and used for destructive and violent activities. These aptly capture and describe the pitiful plight of an Almajiri child in Northern Nigeria.

    Because the Almajiri system is believed to be rooted and founded in Islamic religion and Hausa Fulani cultural practices, many attempts to  reverse the trend or put an end to the abuse to humanity had always hit a brick wall. The fact that Islamic teachings strongly forbids begging, except in very special circumstances which includes; a man’s loss of properties in a disaster, or when a man has loaned much of his money for the common good, such as bringing peace between two warring parties, already proves that Almajiri system as it is being practiced today is completely unislamic. The Almajiri child is totally neglected by his parents, highly vulnerable to diseases and social crimes.

    The Almajiri system of education has deviated from its original motive and is giving this country a bad image in the eyes of the international community. Even though the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan designed a programme under which a few Almajiri model boarding schools were commissioned, the federal government’s intervention which is aimed at integrating conventional western education with Islamic education only turned out to be merely “taking out a spoon-full of water from a tank filled with water” as it wasn’t enough to properly address the problem. Only less than 2% of the children were captured by the federal government’s intervention programme which was meant to remove the Almajiri child off the streets.

    Unless the Almajiri system is banned or adequately reformed to meet the present economic challenges and realities, the problems of underdevelopment, educational backwardness and mass poverty in Northern Nigeria would continue to go from bad to worse. People continue to bear children they do not have the resources to cater for, just because they could easily push such children out on Almajiri. Until this barbaric and inhumane system of modern slavery is outlawed and banned, families wouldn’t stop to produce children outside their income and meager resources. The deliberate breach of the fundamental human right of these young ones calls for urgent concern and the neglect and levity and lack of commitment to the pitiful plight of these minors is unfortunate. As it is presently, Almajiri represents everything that is evil; it is the face of poverty and it is anti-Islam. This is time for President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently put measures in motion which will see to the banishment or reform the Almajiri system in order to save this country of this humanitarian crisis which has given north a bad image for so long.

     

    • Hussain Obaro,

    Ilorin, Kwara State.

  • Soka: New face of an evil forest one year after discovery

    ABOUT a year ago, the Soka community in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, was thrown into confusion and disbelief as mutilated corpses, mentally challenged and malnourished persons were found co-existing in an environment totally unbefitting of human beings. Many individuals, who witnessed the dreaded sight last year, were shocked beyond words. However, a witness to the ugly sight last year one would marvel at the level of transformation that has since taken place.

    The discovery of mutilated bodies and near-dead human beings in the forest had sent jitters down the spines of Nigerians, while the incident made the headlines for most of last year. The more than 30 malnourished persons tied to stakes and hovering between life and death at the site littered with dead bodies, human skulls, limbs and other body parts, were said to be victims of a deadly ring.

    The evil deeds at the forest were said to have come to light after a team of commercial motorcycle riders went in search of two of their members, who had taken passengers to the area but never returned home. Visitors to the site were shocked to the marrow at the sheer bestiality that was going on at the forest.

    However, the public outrage triggered by the discovery subsided with assurances from the Oyo State Government and the security agencies that the culprits would be found and the forest would be transformed into an ultra-modern settlement within a short time.

    A traditional leader in the community, Alhaji Isiaka Bello, told our correspondent that since the government had cleared the forest and transformed it to a school facility, the people of the area had been living without the fear and trauma caused by the ugly discovery.

    Bello said: “When the incident happened, I felt very bad. It was heart-rending. The governor came here and wondered why we never knew that such evil was going on in our community. Sincerely, we used to pass the road that runs through the forest to Macmillan, but we never knew that such evil was going on.

    “Some Fulani herdsmen were always there with their cattle. It is very unfortunate that they did not also see what was going on there. The victims were not mad people as some people claimed.”

    The community leader believes that the people of the area would benefit from the structures being erected by the government at the site. He said: “The facilities that are being built are a very good development. Now, we have an additional education centre in the community. We want the governor to construct the bridge linking Idi-Mangoro to the school. This bridge has been abandoned for many years.”

    A resident of the community, Mr Tope Ayanbolu, said: “You can see that buildings are springing up and the owners of the other areas in the forest have started building hostels and other apartments that they can rent out to individuals or use as guest houses. All the bush in the area has been cleared. I believe that with what government is doing here now, such ugly incidents will never happen in this area again.”

    He urged the security agencies to be on the alert in the community in order to avoid a reoccurrence of the incident.

    Apart from model schools, other structures erected by the government to transform Soka into an ultra-modern community include parks and a community health centre. A visit by our correspondent revealed that private buildings were also being erected, while some others had been completed.

    One of the construction workers, who were seen putting finishing touches to the model school, spoke on condition of anonymity, saying that the government had converted the place into a model secondary school. He said the government had given March ending as deadline for the completion of the project.

    He added: “We are only contractors here. But we learnt that the building will be used as a school whose features will include classrooms, laboratories, a library, an administrative block and staff rooms, among others.

    “This area was once known as the evil forest where they kept kidnapped victims and where ritual killers came to buy human parts. But the government has changed the face of the area. When this school is completed by the end of this month, it will be one of the best in the country.”

    Commenting on how the incident had raised the value of properties in the area, an estate developer, Alhaji Bashiru Akande, said: “When the evil deeds in Soka were discovered, many landlords in the area sold their houses, while many tenants relocated. The effect of this was a slump in the value of properties in the area as many people were not ready to live in that community again. Now, things are getting back to shape because of the transformation that has taken place.”

    While Soka forest is wearing a new look, the police are keeping sealed lips over the arrest of persons behind the dastardly acts a year ago.

    Asked to comment on the result of police investigation so far, the Public Relations Officer of the Oyo State Police Command, Ade Ajisebutu, declined, saying: “I am a new PPRO in Oyo State. I was not around when Soka Forest was discovered; so, I cannot give you any information on it. You went there and saw for yourself.

    “But what I can tell you is that such an ugly incident will not happen again in Oyo State as we have taken proactive measures to nip such crime in the bud. We have engaged in constant visibility policing, constant patrol of the nooks and crannies of the state to prevent such occurrence.

    “We have also engaged in community policing, where we meet with community leaders, youths and other residents of the state to solicit their full cooperation.

    “We will make use of our intelligence gathering from the streets; and the Oyo State Police Command is working with the vigilance group at all levels in information gathering and sharing in tandem with the principle of community policing.”

  • Postponement of the evil day

    President Goodluck Jonathan was given an honest report for the first time in his life in public office shortly before the February 14 2015 date for the general elections. He was told point blank by the members of his kitchen cabinet and sundry aides, that if the elections were conducted on February 14 as planned by INEC, his loss would be so comprehensive that it would set an unbeatable record of defeat that will stand throughout this generation!

    The strategists of the President came up with a battle plan. They advised that the first thing to do was to postpone the election so as to buy as much time as possible to turn the table against the candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC). They asked for and obtained the permission of the President to come up with a script to change the obvious tide of the general elections. The document they came up with was rather simplistic. Having been cooked up by simple-minded fellows. They listed the issues on which the President has performed dismally and requested the President to take some actions, however farcical to correct the anomaly. Next they advised that the slant of PDP propaganda should shift from the decency of issues to the murky arena of innuendoes and slander against not only the candidates of APC but also notable officials of the party. They advised that since the President has very little by the way of achievements, personal attacks on the APC and its members would do just fine. Finally, they advised that since the funds available to the PDP are limitless, truck loads of cash, denominated in dollars, should be deployed to “buy” traditional rulers and opinion leaders, particularly in the South West zone.

    Suddenly, the parade of suspect “achievements” of the President dried up. Assaults on the integrity of the APC Presidential candidate took over. Concurrently, the President embarked on a number of activities. He succumbed to the over-due reduction of the prices of refined petroleum products. No one was fooled. In any case, the shylock marketers decided to make nonsense of the change in the price regime. The action of the President achieved nothing. They felt insulted by the belated decision by a President afraid to lose an election and desperately looking for purchased votes.

    To make up for the neglect, nay betrayal of members of the Armed Forces deployed in combat against Boko Haram terrorists, the President donned an ill-fitting military fatigue and went to the safest areas of operations to mouth some inanities. The bemused troops smiled and wondered about the quality of the Commander-in-Chief under whose command they were serving. The action of the President achieved nothing. The gallant troops ran Boko Haram terrorists out of town after town. They wondered why it took a pending election for the President to do what he had to have done years before. And if the President believes that the recaptured areas will be ready for elections, he needs to do a rethink. There are an estimated 1.5 million internally displaced persons. Their rehabilitation cannot be achieved in time for the elections. If it was, the people would most certainly vote against him.

    To score some cheap votes from the families and loved ones of the 291 girls abducted about a year earlier, the President came up with an inexcusably laughable “ray of hope”, to the effect that since terrorists had not displayed the corpses of the girls, it meant they were still alive! What kind of logic is this? How puerile can a President in desperation get!

    Suddenly, the electricity tariff was slashed in half, less than two weeks before elections! Given the way things are done in Nigeria, the ridiculous 50% reduction cannot be effected before Nigerians vote President Jonathan out of office. In any case, where is the power supply for which the tariff has been slashed? Even the Presidential Villa has huge standby generators and large stock of diesel for use when public power supply is cut off without warning. Nigeria still remains the world’s largest importer of power generators on earth.

    For all practical purposes, the President relocated to the Southwest, the zone which helped him win the 2011 elections. Thinking that the traditional rulers and opinion leaders are up for sale, he embarked on what an insider described a “a dollar rain”! The first set of opinion leaders humoured the President with assurances of “endorsement” even when they are quite sure that no one was going to vote for any candidate because they were bribed to make ridiculous and empty public statements. All of this chicanery was going on well until the dollar train reached Ijebu Ode. It was at this stop that the indomitable Awujale of Ijebu Ode and the paramount ruler of Ijebuland, told the confused President what others previously visited ought to have told him; namely that traditional rulers do not canvass votes for politicians. God bless the Awujale for saving the face of the proud Yoruba people. It is surprising that Mrs Jonathan failed to raise an alarm when her husband proceeded on this charade that “this dollars you are sharing, there is God o!”

    The laughable theatre of the absurd continued with the commissioning of an overhead bridge in Kano! This President certainly has a warped sense of the duty of his high office. The commissioning of an over-head bridge ought not to fall on the laps of a serious President who is aware of his status and the responsibilities of his office. He went ahead to name the over-head bridge after the highly respected late Emir of Kano, thinking perhaps that the people of Kano would vote for him and his indecent, clumsy and illegal ouster of the present Emir of Kano, the cerebral and fearless Lamido Sanusi.

    Whilst the President was disgracing himself and his high office, the fellows who had put their mouths in the over drive mode continued. They spoke like medical experts. One even put on the toga of a prophet, predicting all sorts of nonsense. The President’s wife, who is irrepressible and unbeatable when it comes to indecent conduct, overreached herself when she ordered the electorate to stone those with a different political persuasion. In civilized climes, that woman would have been arrested for inciting violence. But in Nigeria, that would be the day.

    Key officials and members of APC, who are not candidates in the forth-coming elections received more than their fair share of slanderous attacks. No more can be said or written about this issue because it is sub judice. Illiterate or at best semi-literate political jobbers started parading themselves as spoke persons for the Yoruba race! One sunny March day, these rascals took over the ever-busy Ikorodu road and enacted truly horrific brigandage. They wanted Prof Jega out of office, so that their sponsors can appoint a malleable and spineless man to do their bidding by manipulating to process to produce a dubious victory for President Jonathan.

    Unfortunately, the contrived postponement also gave Nigerians the opportunity to expose some of the illegal and indecent acts of President Jonathan. Perhaps the public would not have gotten to know about the scandalous land grab, for which President Jonathan obtained approval from one of his own appointees. An area set aside for the future expansion of the international airport and appropriately one Ebele Integrated Farms mistook name “Aviation village” for an “agricultural village”!

    The era of President Jonathan and the PDP is over.  The postponement of the general elections has not achieved the desired objective. The President should immediately commence the evacuation of his personal belongings from the Villa. Bye President Jonathan!

    • Colonel Ola Majoyeogbe is a retired military intelligence officer, security consultant and public affairs analyst.

  • The evil called outsourcing

    •Banks have no basis for such inhuman policy

    The true worth of labour of most banking staff in the country remains an intriguing poser in view of the denigrating recruitment process most banks in the country have in place. The banks do so under the guise of outsourcing staff so as to cut cost. But the trend has created a Frankenstein monster styled as contract staff/casual labour and usually at the detriment of those recruited. The policy gives no career security, commitment or fulfilment to victims but favours just two parties – the outsourcing firms and the banks.

    The above was aptly amplified by the reported pathetic case of one Mrs. Dorothy Anya Igwe who was outsourced to an unnamed bank in Ojo area of Lagos State. Her story: She fell ill while on official duty and got official permission from the outsourcing company to visit the approved hospital. After getting well, she got a medical report of fitness from the approved hospital that she tendered on resumption of duty.

    But to her chagrin, her salary for the duration of her illness from April to September, 2014, was stopped. Her complaints reportedly led to her being relieved of duty. She was recalled months after but finally sacked after her continuing insistence that she must be paid her arrears of salary. Igwe was left in the lurch by the outsourcing company and the bank that denied her and also failed to pay her arrears of salary. There are several unreported examples of Igwe-type ill-treatment in the banking industry.

    Perhaps, it is high time the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) beamed its klieg-light on all reported labour abuses by the banks through this inhuman staff outsourcing. The policy is even insensitive to the peculiar nature of banking business as strategic positions such as bank secretary, operations officer, vehicle/ bullion van drivers and security operatives are among others that are outsourced from designated companies.

    These outsourced staff handle vital information in bank/customer relations and bank operations’ secrets that could easily be compromised since outsourced staff owe no allegiance or commitment to the banks. They can leak sensitive information that could give impetus to fraudsters’ operations against banks or which could lead to armed robbery attacks against the banks, with insider connection. The risks for banks involved in this oppressive recruitment approach lacks rational economic sense for its continuation.

    We therefore call on the CBN to come out and state clearly whether or not it supports this exploitative outsourcing of staff in banks and other companies in the nation. The Ministry of Labour and Productivity seems to have failed in setting the policy template necessary to improve employment conditions by discouraging discrimination among staff, not only in the banks but in other big corporate entities as well. Quite unfathomable is the fact that workers in the country are in the doldrums. It is unimaginable that the CBN and the labour ministry will tolerate an outsourcing employment regime that gives no conditions of service and where the outsourcing firms, apart from paid consultancy service fee running into millions, also get a huge percentage from the salaries of the contract workers every month.

    Most banks declare huge profits annually, and based on what they declare, they should be able to employ desirable staff and pay them respectable remuneration, not the trifle under the guise of staff outsourcing that is known as a strategy adopted by companies in distress to cut staff cost and rationalise departments and operations.

    We know that some banks in some other countries have adopted outsourcing of staff as a cost-saving measure, the point is that their environments are different from ours: labour does not come cheap in some of these countries unlike here where labour is relatively cheap. Moreover, people who are not getting commensurate pay cannot be said to be employed in the real sense of the word; they are therefore susceptible to all the temptations that the unemployed are exposed to.

    What we are saying is that staff outsourcing is cruel, improper and uncivilised, not only in banks but in all entities that want the public to see them as respectable.

  • My wife is evil, wasteful, says man

    •‘I don’t know why he hates me’

    A 62-year-old property agent, Deji Odutola, aka Hadji White, has prayed the Customary Court in Alagbado, Lagos to dissolve his eight-year-old marriage to Sherifat. Oduntayo is accusing his wife of cruelty, covetousness and dishonesty.

    The marriage, which was sealed under Native and Customary Law in 2006, is blessed with a male child.

    “My wife is evil. Even before I married her, I had allocated all my property to my children here in Nigeria and abroad. I, however, added a caveat: that I could take everything back, if not properly managed.

    So, I gave my wife the house that my first daughter couldn’t maintain and we agreed she would be giving me some amounts of money annually. When she was due to make the first payment, she defaulted. Instead, she spent the money on her six children from her previous marriages.

    “This is the third year and my wife hasn’t given me a kobo from the house I built with my sweat. When I celebrated my birthday, my wife couldn’t make any financial contribution. She only bought a standing fan for me, which I returned because it was the least I expected from her.

    “I have been wearing white dresses for 37 years, so I don’t want my reputation tarnished in anyway; otherwise, I would have engaged some hoodlums to throw her out of my house. She keeps giving flimsy excuses, saying she doesn’t know how to pack her things. She even claims that the house is her son’s share of the property I allocated. But it is a blatant lie.

    “I think our marriage had crumbled before we got here because it’s over three years since I slept with her or even saw her. All I want is the money she collected for four years. I want her out of the house and out of my life, he said.”

    In her defence, 45-year-old Sherifat said:” I really can’t figure out when the problem started. This is because among his 10 wives, I have always been treated as a slave. I have always endured the insults and abuses because I am tired of sleeping under different roofs.

    “When I was expecting our child, he complained of sleeping beside an expectant mother, adding that it made him broke.  Surprisingly, 41 days after I was delivered of the child, my husband asked me if the child was his or someone else’s.

    “My husband has moved me to three different houses for no genuine reasons. I change houses like clothes. Contrary to his claim, he didn’t allocate any house to my son.

    “I used the money I got from the tenants to renovate the house because it was untidy. I wonder why he is asking for money now.  Since we moved into the house, he has not sent money for our son’s upkeep. When I tried to see him, he ordered his workers to throw me out. He doesn’t respect me at all let alone his child. Our son was barely two years old when my husband complained that he didn’t greet him. So, he said he won’t sign any document in my son’s name.

    “I don’t know why he said he is just seeing me after three years. I remember we saw each other at a hotel recently and we even made love that day.

    “Recently, my husband’s friends rough-handled me, seized my items and took me to another house, as ordered by my ‘rich’ husband. I refused to stay there because it was deserted and it had ‘For sale’ boldly written on it. If he can allocate the house to my son, I will gladly live there; otherwise, I will go back to the house I renovated.

    “I don’t know why my husband hates me because he has allotted some property to some women he married after me and the children he had after my son. I don’t want a divorce.”

    The court President, Mr. Olubode Sekoni, invited the parties to a chamber discussion and ordered them to bring four relations each.

    The case was adjourned till September 29.

  • Evil of kerosene and firewood

    Kerosene and firewood are the two most conventional sources of fuel for domestic cooking stoves in Nigeria. These two sources of domestic cooking fuel have been seen to have high level of carbon emission which in majority of cases have been found to be unhealthy to our human body let alone children. Over the past four decades, Nigerians living in townships and rural areas are used to either kerosene cook-stoves or firewood as the popular fuel for domestic cooking. This killer trend has a long history in our society; possibly due to the available resources, i.e. forest reserves and crude oil. But then as the world is drifting more into cleaner sources of energy, there is need for the Nigerian authorities to adopt these measures with adequate sensitisation programme, especially at the grassroots level and with the private sector’s support. Green energy is becoming popular in America, Asia and Europe due to their huge carbon footprint over the years with little or no penetration into most African countries.

    Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is not becoming a conventional source of fuel for cook-stoves in Nigeria. The use of LPG as source of fuel is common in the urban, particularly in places where its supply is readily accessible and not in the rural areas of Nigeria. The main reasons why LPG is widely adopted for household use are: it is convenient to operate, easy to control, and clean to use because of the blue flame emitted during cooking. However, because of the continued increase in the price of oil in the world market, the price of LPG fuel has gone up tremendously and is continuously increasing at a fast rate. At present, a 12.5-kg LPG, that is commonly used by common households for cooking, costs as high as 3,000 naira – 3,500 naira per cylinder in urban areas. For a typical household, having four children, one LPG tank can be consumed within 20 to 30 days only depending on the number and amount of food being cooked. Use of LPG is proving rather expensive for the government, consumer and the environment as well.

    For the past years, gasifier stoves using biomass as fuel have been developed in countries like the US, China, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and other developing countries in Asia. These gasifier stoves produce a flammable gas by burning the fuel with limited amount of air. These stoves can easily replace the conventional LPG stove. This stove has no problem of pollution and using the abundant rice husk and other biomass fuel, it can drastically reduce the cost of cooking fuel. Rice farmers in Nigeria can easily access the waste of rice husks from their individual farms or from rice processors as fuel needed for rice husk biomass gas stoves.

    Benefits of the Biomass Gas Stove:

    The rice husk gas stove technology is found to have the following advantages, not only to users but to the general public as well:

    1. It is a good replacement for LPG stove, particularly in terms of fuel savings and quality of flame (i.e., luminous blue flame) produced during cooking. By direct energy conversion, about 50 kg of rice husk can replace a cylinder.

    2. It will significantly reduce the cost of household spending on conventional fuel sources such as electricity, kerosene, wood, and wood charcoal.

    3. It will help reduce the carbon dioxide emission in the air brought about by the burning of LPG, wood and other biomass fuel in the traditional cook-stoves, which contributes to the ozone layer depletion and consequently in the “greenhouse effect” into the atmosphere.

    By Egun Sunday

    egunsunday@hotmail.com.