Nigeria is killing her future

Recently, I watched a woman complain bitterly because an Oyo State Road Traffic Management Authority (OYRTMA) official had stopped an Okada rider from parking by the roadside. The woman was angry. According to her, the official did not fear God. He was making transportation harder for ordinary Nigerians and making them take the long route. But the OYRTMA official was simply doing his job.

And this is one of Nigeria’s biggest contradictions. Nigerians like the idea of a working country. We just don’t always like what a working country requires from us.

We want functional hospitals, but we prefer to patronise unregulated “chemist” shops.

We want safe food, but we look away when food is adulterated to increase profit.

We want government agencies to enforce standards, until those standards inconvenience us.

The average Nigerian is driven by a greed that doesn’t allow him to put into perspective the consequences of his action on his nearest neighbour as long as it serves his own interests. And this greed leads us to compromise everything as long as it brings in profit and this is slowly killing us as a nation.

Millions of Nigerians consume store-bought food and farm produce from the market and 95.5% of these items are compromised. From the point of manufacturing, dangerous chemicals are added as fertilisers to farm produce so as to influence supply. The market also does not spare in this compromise chain; dyes are added to palm oil to make it redder, preservatives are injected inside farm produce to make them look fresh even after spending weeks in the coldhouse.

But it is not only about the market seller, brands whose products we sometimes have to pay expensively for in hopes to get quality deliberately hide important nutritional information on products so they aren’t visible enough.

In June 2026, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare disclosed that unsafe food causes nearly 50 million illnesses and more than 53,000 deaths every year in Nigeria.

Compromised food contains bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins and chemical contaminants.

Years of daily consumption lead to higher risk of diseases ranging from diarrhoea to cancer.

Our popular Agege bread is perhaps a classic example.

Agege bread remains one of the cheapest and most accessible foods in the country. For many, it is breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Yet studies have repeatedly found evidence of potassium bromate in bread at concentrations above safe despite its prohibition by NAFDAC. Interestingly, potassium bromate is not key to making great bread but manufacturers add it to make low-quality bread feel like high-quality despite it causing a health risk.

But the damage does not always announce itself immediately, it accumulates. Nigeria’s health burden is already enormous. In 2024, cardiovascular disease deaths in Nigeria increased to 235,862.

But the frightening thing is when the hospital is not safe either. At least one in ten medicines is substandard or falsified which can worsen an illness or ultimately lead to death.

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But it is not limited to food and drugs, cosmetics, household products and sometimes, even the information consumers need to make safe choices are compromised at grand scales. Cosmetics and household items are infused with chemicals that increase risk of cancer, kidney disease are used in products.

This is what happens when profit is placed above human life.

The question is: What will be the fate of the average if we continue compromising everything for profit?

As of 2023, Nigeria’s life expectancy at birth was 54 years and we keep consuming compromising food and products which might cut it short.

Children under five account for more than 80% of the country’s foodborne disease burden.

That is not a food safety problem. It is a national development problem. We suffer from nutritional deficiency, yet food cost keep increasing without proper regulation of the manufacturing and production process.

Do we have to become forensic scientists before buying soap?

Do we all have to become backyard farmers simply because we no longer trust the food system?

Nigerians should not have to gamble with their life and health to tell an original product from a fake one.

When regulation goes beyond a public announcement, producers know that compromising safety standards will cost them more than they could ever make from cutting corners.

The trader adulterating a product only thinks about his profit. The manufacturer cutting corners only cares about cutting production costs. But like the angry woman mentioned at the beginning of this story who wanted to board an Okada where she wished, millions of individual decisions made in pursuit of personal convenience eventually become a national problem.

We pay for our greed, masked with street smartness with shorter and poorer lives.

What will we feed on when everything kills us slowly?

What will we feed our children when we can’t trust the labels on a product?

Nigeria’s unregulated food, drug and consumer products system is costing a Nigerian per hour. A family man has to quit his job because of a terminal illness that could have been prevented. A child is diagnosed with a disability. A family has to spend more money on healthcare. A young promising youth has lost his life because he got symptoms caused by food poisoning from fake drugs.

We cannot build a future by poisoning the people who are supposed to live in it.

This is how a country kills its future.

•Oladeji, a corps member with Saturday Tribune, can be reached via [email protected]