PUNCH
Media houses in Nigeria need to forewarn western medical practitioners who advertise on their platforms. This is because it is becoming common that, for many of them, the way to promote their imported pharmaceuticals and medical equipment is to bad-mouth the products of traditional medical practitioners. I think any attack by western medical practitioners on traditional medical practitioners amounts to belittling what’s indigenous to us. No serious nation should permit this. Science and modern medicine are helpful, but I don’t think western medical practitioners who make money from them have any right to talk down on what others do.
The other time, one Nigerian medical doctor was promoting his imported surgical equipment on TV and his method was to bad-mouth the products of traditional medical practitioners. I’m not convinced this person needs to talk like this in order to promote his imported equipment. Yet he did. I suppose it’s because there’re no restrictions against this on our media platforms. Anyone comes, casts others in a bad light, and no one warns them. It’s a trend that has been going on for some time among western medical doctors, especially those who don’t see anything good in what is traditional, natural, indigenous.
I did make submissions on this page regarding this issue several times in the past. I don’t belittle traditional medicine because I know it works. I don’t belittle what is indigenous because I believe when we source solutions here, we don’t take our money outside to enrich other nations. But some who are trained in western medicine don’t have this worldview. They import what they don’t contribute to making, and because they want patronage they demean what is ours. It’s a mentality I condemn in every way possible. These are people whose parents and grandparents lived into their ripe old age by using herbs that are ours. But they forget all of that and start bad-mouthing what we have. Note that the same indigenous traditional solutions are what, for instance, the Chinese have and they make billions of dollars out of. In Nigeria, what is traditional is projected as bad by those whose narrow view of everything is exactly that – narrow. They do this often because no one calls their attention to what they miss, no one engages them in debates that make them examine what they say that mostly aren’t thought through.
It’s worthwhile to remember that many herbs used earlier on to develop some drugs in the western world were taken from the tropics which included places such as Nigeria. Later, artificial versions of properties in these herbs are made in labs and this is how some western drugs become exclusively made in these western nations. But we still have the natural and original thing here, which I know from scholarly writings are less dangerous to the human body than the artificial equivalents. I watched a documentary where a western scientist was lamenting the rate of destruction in parts of Nigeria of some rare plants with rare medicinal properties. Some of these plants haven’t even had their properties fully researched and documented. But they are being rapidly destroyed. Here, many don’t care, particularly Nigerians trained in western medical practice who import all things for their business while they dismiss what we have here.
The reader would understand why I take on this topic if they understood that I believe in what is natural 100 per cent, as well as in the saying that “prevention is better than cure.” Use what is natural for preventive and curative purposes and it saves anyone the headache of depending on drugs made with chemicals. It’s been my experience for decades. What is natural is plenty here, but western medical practitioners who want to make money from what they import won’t tell you this.
They won’t openly tell you to watch what you eat, live a balanced life, rather than depend on expensive drugs. They won’t tell you that those plants and trees in your neighbourhood are medicinal and can deal with the same issues they ask you to purchase expensive drugs for. These guys must sell drugs and use hi-tech equipment that they import to Nigeria on you, so they won’t take their time to tell you these things. Someone lost his wife and he told me that it was after this unfortunate incident a western medical practitioner sat him down for a talk. This western medical practitioner told him that living on drugs perpetually isn’t really safe. After years of using the same drugs for an ailment, the blood vessels of the listener’s wife became blocked with residue such that further uses of the same drugs didn’t deal anymore with the ailment. Most western medical practitioners wouldn’t ever mention this.
