Muhammad Yakubu, Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Leather and Science Technology (NILEST), Zaria, crafted copious cant this week, leading an assault on the cow skin (ponmo) beloved by millions of Nigerians. The institute, he said, would approach the National Assembly with a legislation to ban ponmo in order to revive Nigeria’s comatose leather industry and boost the economy. Hear him: “To the best of my knowledge, Nigerians are the only people in the world that overvalue skin as food. After all, ponmo has no nutritional value.”
You see, in this country, some people in government just wake up in the morning and decide to be unfortunate. They want to destroy a thriving, time-tested food industry in order to revive a lie. And sadly, some citizens think that this is a joke. How can matters of food and survival be a joke? Have these people forgotten what substantially triggered the French revolution (1788-1789)? Unable to afford bread, the people were asked to eat cake instead, a foolish pronouncement. Cake, even if widely available, could never have been a substitute for bread. Were the people supposed to eat their ewa agoyin with cake?
Last year, the government imposed a new tax on soft drinks. Now it is after ponmo. I agree with Monday Ubani, the chairman of the NBA- SPIDEL, who has threatened to drag the government to court over the matter. Said Ubani: “While politicians and rich Nigerians chew all manner of proteins in every of their sumptuous meals with their loved ones, they have become restless and jealous of the only thing that the common man chews while eating meals of affliction.”
I laugh at the leather joke. Where is the electricity to run the leather business? And who says leather and ponmo production are mutually exclusive? What about synthetic leather? Besides, I can’t help noticing the ethnic dimension in this charade: those who want to banish our ponmo are the same people who approved AKs for Katsina but say Amotekun deserves only cudgels. It is customary for officials of this government to haul insults down South. They know that the Ahmad Lawan-led legislature is docile. Who would dare to go to Saraki’s Senate with a proposal to ban ponmo?
A ponmo assailant has to be a devil, because that’s the only thing the poor people have. No matter the quantity of beef in egusi, there must be ponmo to balance the equation. Ponmo has no fat and it tickles my taste buds. Forget about the prohibitive cost of other sources of protein: the truth is that we can’t stop eating ponmo. Royal majesties eat ponmo. Mr. Scientist, what’s your business with our nutrition? Is it your nutrition? How healthy are you, Mr Nutritionist? And to think that some of the hypocrites in government use tobacco!! What is the nutritional value of tobacco?
Mr. Banner, don’t just ban ponmo, ban soft drinks because of diabetes, ban beef itself because of cholesterol, ban face-me-I-face-you residences because of congestion. Don’t forget to ban yams too: we need to take them abroad to earn foreign exchange so that politicians can have more money to embezzle! I don’t know what crime we committed to be governed by ghouls.
I see a lot of pompous commentators dismissing ponmo, the same ponmo that their entire generation cannot do without. With a phone and little data, some jesters just position themselves as lords over the society. These comedians forget that ponmo is an industry that employs thousands of people, a legitimate, clean business that harms no one and does no damage to the body, and that the lives involved in the business will be ruined if the industry collapses. They forget many things because of their demonic preoccupation with their imaginary leather revolution. Folks, these ponmo assassins are no leaders. They are not people of integrity and they have absolutely no fear of God. They want to police people’s soup pots. Very soon they will declare that our God-given air is contaminated, that it damages our lungs, and so we need air-filter machines recommended by the government. They cannot look at the masses without seeking means to make them more miserable.
Their claim is beyond ludicrous; they are yet to show us that those who don’t eat ponmo are stronger, more reliable and more committed citizens than those who do. They and their oponu scientists haven’t been able to show us how precisely ponmo harms our nutrition. There’s nothing as ludicrous as an intellectually and ethically challenged government official articulating a demented policy. These Pharaohs did not even grant us the courtesy of debate: it was enough, in their view, that they told us of their plans!
You can’t prove as a ponmo hater that you live longer than us ponmo lovers. I join Captain Absolute in Sheridan’s The Rivals to say: Cease your impertinence.
My judgment
Having carefully considered the arguments of the ponmo assailants, I have no hesitation in declaring that they are based on pomposity and an utter lack of logic. I hereby throw them out for lacking in merit. The assailants, to borrow from Mary-Odili (JSC, Retd) are “meddlesome interlopers”. They lack locus standi to harangue and persecute ponmo, having not been granted any latitude by the Constitution to legislate on culinary choices. By proposing culinary dictatorship, they seek to abridge rights freely conferred on citizens by the Constitution.
They seek to fetter citizens to their private preferences and must be resisted to ensure the society’s most basic freedoms. Indeed, not even the much derided military ever thought to impose such culturally insensitive, draconian and punitive measures on the populace. Let it be a settled point of justice that the fundamental and inalienable right of the Nigerian people to eat ponmo cannot have been taken away by the 1999 Constitution (As amended) and certainly not by politicians elected on the basis of its provisions and the Electoral Act, let alone by unelected government officials not empowered to legislate on culinary or health matters.
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