Nigeria’s dying herbal medicine heritage

There is a trending disparity between local traditional healing and western medicine, resulting in the ongoing misconceptions against traditional healthcare system in Nigeria. People have adapted to western healing methods and drugs that they have forgotten how the old ways saved their forefathers at little or no cost and how herbs and animal derived remedies helped them to live up to  hundred and beyond.

A typical Nigerian may buy Organic Indian products at $16 online to improve his immune system, but too lazy to cut the most commonly free Dongoyaro leaves (Neem leaves) for his medical needs, not knowing that the organic product is 80 per cent Neem leaf. Many have neglected traditional healing methods, labeling it as taboo but they are not the major cause of our dying medicinal heritage.

Many traditional recipes are facing extinction because those with the knowledge continue to hoard the secrets. Rather than merge their knowledge with western scientific procedures, they limit it to the family. The effect is that when these healers die, the knowledge dies with them.

What happen to those healers is similar to how elite and political leaders keep resources which ought to benefit the general public to themselves. We need to change our orientation and appreciate and value the God given African healing ways. India and China are in the forefront of medical treatment because they embraced their traditional heritage. The west that tagged our traditional medicine as barbaric and fetish only say that to maintain their dominance.

According to professor Ezebunwa Nwokocha of the university of Ibadan, factors affecting traditional healthcare delivery systems are negative perception of traditional medicine, lack of awareness, the high level of gullibility among Nigerians, dwindling involvement of young Nigerians in traditional medicine, stiff competition from introduced medicine and government policy.

It is time for government to look for knowledgeable herbalists, compensate them reasonably for their knowledge and find ways to modify traditional based healing knowledge into what the larger populace can benefit from. Government should also advance traditional medicine by making it a curriculum for all medical courses.

The traditional health system can be a good source of national income if well tapped. The World Health Organisation estimates that 80 per cent of the world’s population relies directly or indirectly on local herbal and animal remedies. No one says Nigeria cannot be the new stop for traditional healing.

Oyelakin Saheed Oyekola,

Kano.