Aliyu cautions Nigerians on imported foods

The Niger State Governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, has called on Nigerians to be wary of what they eat and drink in their productive years as findings have shown that most of the present day ailments emanate from harmful and imported food items found not to be healthy for Nigerians and the black man in general.
Aliyu said: “Life expectancy has been short simply because people ignorantly indulge in bad feeding habits of eating and drinking with little regards to their health now, which also affects them in the long run when they are getting older in life.”
Aliyu spoke at the special get together for the aged people in Niger State to mark the 2014 United Nations’ World Old Peoples’ Day, which took place at the Murtala Mohammed Memorial Amusement Park in Minna.
Governor Aliyu criticised strongly the ideologies, which is fast creeping into the Nigerian society, that people with certain body structures were adjudged more healthy than others in line with the yardstick for measuring ‘healthy life and well-being’ bequeathed by the western world.
He added: “Nigerians in the pre-colonial era have been eating and surviving on local foods before the advent of bleached and packaged foods, which has become more of class thing among the Nigerian populace, particularly the younger generations.
“Our eating habits should be centered towards maintaining healthy looks and living healthy.
“It is not all that is imported that is good or healthy for consumption in this part of the clime.”
Aliyu, who was visibly happy that some of the celebrants could still try some dancing steps at almost 80 years, said: “Old age is not a curse but a cycle of life, which only God himself has the powers to dictate on how long one lives and as well when he takes the person’s life.”
Furthermore, Aliyu lamented what he described as “erosion of our culture and embracing of western culture”, which, according to him, has made the African culture of being one another’s brothers’ keeper to almost becoming extinct.
The mad rush for “everything western” is fast relegating Nigerian culture and indeed that of the entire African race to the background and this, Governor Aliyu said, would spell doom for the future generations if nothing and urgently too was done to check the trend.