The Making of a New Paradox

Nigeria is one vast land of ironies and paradoxes. This is no news. Sometimes the paradoxes are so glaring that one does not need to open his or her eyes to see or feel them. Or does one need eyes to know that Nigeria is a fabulously rich country yet the citizens are some of the poorest in the world. Even in this era when national earnings and budgets run in the billions and trillions over 70 per cent of Nigerians are living on $1 and less a day. It is a wonder why social scientists have not fashioned a theory or a law out of the situation since, a law that could read thus: “The wealth in the hands of ordinary Nigerians is and will continue to be inversely proportional to the wealth of their fatherland, if bad leadership remains constant.”

The trucks of imported rice crawling all over the country depict another aspect of the irony  a country so immensely blessed with arable land in forest and savannah depending on rice from countries that are not as well endowed! There is also the shame of being the sixth (I learnt we have moved down to seventh position behind Angola) largest oil producing nation in the world but importing petroleum products for local consumption. The endless queues of women and children at petrol stations waiting to buy kerosene and the countless others who roam the streets in search of the commodity are living monuments of the paradox. Some years back it was queues of vehicles waiting for petrol, now it is women and kids waiting for kerosene, the basic cooking fuel. I pray we do not get to the point of queuing for essential commodities again as was the case in the early 80s.

Yet there is also the irony of being one of the most endowed nations in terms of natural gas but in need of gas to run the electric power plants initiated under the National Integrated Power Project, NIPP. According to operators in the oil industry, Nigeria could better be termed a natural gas nation instead of an oil nation because its gas reserves are 10 times more than what it has in crude oil. Nigeria is said to be flaring N80 billion worth of gas every year, yet it has problems getting gas to the power plants!

In the face of all these, we do not seem to be tired of brewing more paradoxes. One of the new ones in the making (it is at an advanced stage really) is the paradox of locally made herbal medicines selling at a higher cost than either their foreign made counterparts or orthodox alternatives. Just go out there and ask the price of some of the vigorously advertised herbal medicines, it would amaze you. Some sell for upwards of N5,000 a dose. I even saw one that is supposed to be a remedy for hypertension for N12,000. And they are all touted to be locally produced from local herbs that grow around us!

Those of us who grew up in the villages still remember how the traditional medicine practice used to be. Even in the cities, those who have had course to use what is generally referred to in South-Western Nigeria, including Lagos, as agbo would testify that they are usually cheap and at the reach of the lowest of the low. This is because most of the materials used for preparing the medicines are locally sourced, and in most cases at no financial cost. In my village in those days, the only cost you may bear for a herbal remedy is the cost of buying local gin (ogogoro), that is when it is required for preparing the medicine. The other factor that was responsible for the cheap cost of herbal medicines was the generally understood principle on the part of traditional herbal medicine practitioners that theirs was a humanitarian calling.

But today, herbal medicines now attract a very stiff price. Some so-called herbal or alternative medicine practitioners now charge consultancy fees that only the very rich can afford. The argument some of them put up is that their herbal remedies are products of long and painstaking research unlike the traditional concoctions which were more or less products of chance.

One cannot pretend that things have not changed in herbal medical practice. Besides the research, the medicines now come in fashionable packages, some even come in the form of capsules. All these cost money, no doubt. Based on the cost of research and packaging, orthodox medicines would have been priced beyond the reach of the average man. Perhaps a pack of Panadol should have been selling for as much as N100. But it sells for far less. Are the makers of these orthodox drugs not making profit? They should have been out of business if they were not.

So why do the makers of some of these herbal drugs insist on selling their products at such exorbitant prices? Greed, most likely, the same kind of greed that is fuelling all the other forms of paradoxes that plague our country! The same kind of greed that makes our leaders to allow our refineries to rot so that they can give licenses to their wives, children and cronies to import petroleum products at international prices. In the case of some of these herbal medicine practitioners, the greed is even laced with lies, some of the products are only not just made locally, they do not have any local herb in them. They are drugs made in China or India and packaged as drugs made from local herbs.

The kind of greed practiced by these herbal or alternative medicine practitioners reminds me of my grand uncle. He was the custodian of a local herbal remedy our great-grand-mother had for diabetes. He was the one the old woman used to send to pluck the leaves anytime anyone who has the ailment was referred to her for help. She never collected a kobo from any of her patients. She used to tell the patients that when they get well, if they feel like appreciating her they could do so. After her death, my uncle took over. But out of greed, he introduced a range of prices depending on how badly the case had deteriorated. He made some good money from the medicine. But as the years wore on the medicine began to lose its potency until he was left with no medicine again. Unfortunately, he himself got struck with diabetes, and the doctor could not cure himself. He eventually died of that ailment.

Whatever happened to the medicine that made it to lose its potency is still a mystery to me. It is something traditional and herbal medicine practitioners should research into and explain to us lay men. But the simple lesson in it should not be lost on anyone  greed kills.