NIGERIA-HEALTH: Killer Beans Cause Major Scare

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Sep 23 1996 (IPS) - Reports that at least 16 people have died in south-western Nigeria after eating beans have caused a major scare and controversy here.

Vendors claim the reports, carried in the press, are a plot to reduce the price of the commodity, which is the main source of protein for poor Nigerians. But most people in the three south- western states of Lagos, Ogun and Oyo have stopped consuming beans pending the results of an official investigation.

The newspaper reports surfaced early last week. They said 14 people died in Lagos after eating brown beans, while a woman who sold akara (bean cakes) in Ogun died after eating some of her cakes to convince the parents of one victim that the food the boy had bought from her had not caused his death.

The reports have led many consumers to stop buying beans and bean products, forcing vendors to drop their prices in a vain effort to get consumption back up to normal levels. The cost of a 100-kg bag of beans has gone from the equivalent of 94 U.S. dollars to 75 U.S. dollars.

“The news of the killer brown beans has almost sent us out of business as we usually sold about 500 bags of beans on a market day but this week (last week) not a single bag was sold,” complained Donatus Okor, chair of the Ogun state branch of the Beans Dealers Association.

Bose Humpati, who sells only cooked beans and yam porridge lamented her losses when IPS visited her canteen at Onike, a Lagos suburb, on Friday.

“I was making about 6,000 naira (75 dollars) daily from cooked beans and yam but since the killer beans issue was reported, nobody eats beans any more,” she told IPS. “Now I make just 200 naira (2.5 dollars) selling only yams. It is killing.”

“I hope to resume sales as soon as the government says things are okay but I know it will take time for customers to really come back to eating beans,” said Humpati, who has been selling cooked beans for 15 years.

Scientists say hoarders may have mixed the mystery beans with chemicals to prevent them from being attacked by weevils.

Prof. A. Daramola, a lecturer at the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training in Ibadan, Oyo state, explained that when beans have absolutely no trace of insects, that usually means they have been highly treated with chemicals and should not be eaten.

The state’s Health Commissioner, Gbola Adetunji, said in a press release said the government was aware of the deaths and he warned consumers not to eat unfamiliar beans, especially when they have an unusual odour.

But the Foodstuff Sellers Association in Oyo state charged that reports were aimed at running them out of business. Its chairman, Mustapha Raji, urged journalists to dispel the “rumour” that people were dying from eating beans.

“As a result of the rumour, sales of beans of all varieties in our markets have dropped,” he said. “Customers are no more patronising us. This is a deliberate attempt to bring down the price of beans. It is affecting us.”

“The killer beans could be in Lagos and Ogun state but not in our state because members of our association neither hoard nor keep beans for storage in the markets,” Raji added. “We always buy and sell whenever the commodity is available.”

His counterparts in Ogun took the issue more seriously. They called for a thorough investigation into the alleged killer-bean deaths.

“The investigation should also fish out beans sellers who may have sold contaminated beans to members of the public and punish them accordingly,” Okor said. “Government should invite families of victims who died from eating the beans and make them identify whoever sold the product to them.”

Up to Friday, the Federal Health Ministry had said nothing about the issue, even though an editorial in Thursday’s issue of the private ‘Guardian’ newspaper commented that its silence had “deepened the puzzle and fright, magnifying the potency of the rumour mill”.

But ‘Sketch’, a state-owned newspaper in Oyo, argued that it was unlikely that the reports were just rumours. “There are many interesting things to report on, so the press could not have been making things up,” it said in an editorial.

It also recalled that journalists in Britain had exposed the ‘mad cow’ disease while the Spanish media had bared a cooking-oil scandal in the 1980s.

Similarly, Delu Ogunade, a mass communications lecturer at the University of Lagos, doubts that the reports are baseless. While admitting that they could be just rumours since “nothing is impossible in Nigeria”, he told IPS that “if nothing happened, the press cannot go to town.”

“It is a 50-50 possibility that people had died of the poisonous beans,” he said.

The National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has collected more than 100 samples of beans of all types from markets in Lagos, Ogun and Oyo and has been carrying out laboratory tests on them.

“At the moment, no evidence has emerged to corroborate unofficial claims that some people had died or fallen ill from the consumption of allegedly contaminated beans,” NAFDAC’s Gabriel Osuide told IPS.

“As a scientific and professional organisation, we can not afford to be involved in speculation on things that involve human lives,” he explained. “As soon as the investigation is concluded, the result will be forwarded to the Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture which called for the investigation.”

Until the investigation’s results are released, bean vendors are likely to continue seeing their sales drop.

Says civil servant Ayo Ajayi: “As soon as the old stock I have is finished, that will be the end of beans for me and my family until government says it is okay to take beans.”

Kike Adeleke had no beans in her store when the news broke and she has not replenished her stock. “I have since stopped cooking beans in my house,” she said. “Whether the press is lying or not, I don’t want to take chances. How can one be sure which variety is contaminated?”.

“It is painful that we have to stop eating beans which are the main source of protein in our diet,” she told IPS. “Fish and meat are very costly but now we have no choice but to try and buy them occasionally as protein supplement.”