From roadside fruit stalls to open-air meat markets, a silent killer lurks on Nigerian plates. Fruits ripened overnight with calcium carbide, meat cooked tender with paracetamol, grains preserved with sniper insecticide, and cassava soaked in bleach or detergent — these shocking revelations emerged from a Senate investigation that has now shaken the nation’s conscience.
Declaring the situation a “public health emergency”, the Senate on Wednesday moved to amend existing laws and impose stiffer penalties on anyone using toxic chemicals in food production or processing across the country.
The resolution followed the adoption of a damning report by the Joint Senate Committees on Health (Secondary and Tertiary) and Agricultural Services, Production and Rural Development, which uncovered widespread, dangerous, and illegal practices in Nigeria’s food supply chain.
“What Nigerians are eating daily is slow poison,” one lawmaker lamented during the debate. “This is not about consumer rights — it’s about survival.”
The Senate’s investigative hearing, held on July 17, 2025, revealed a chilling trend of chemical abuse in food processing.
Fruit sellers were found using raw calcium carbide — an industrial chemical for welding — to speed up ripening, releasing poisonous arsenic and phosphine gas in the process. Meat vendors reportedly boiled tough beef with paracetamol tablets to soften it. Grain merchants used Sniper (Dichlorvos) to kill insects in stored grains. Cassava processors soaked tubers in detergent or Hypo bleach. Palm oil and pepper sellers used Sudan IV dye — a banned colouring agent linked to cancer — to enhance redness.
And in abattoirs, some butchers burnt tyres to remove animal furs, coating meat with toxic residues. Even fruits on supermarket shelves were not spared: some were coated with Morpholine, a waxing chemical banned by the European Union for its potential to cause liver and kidney damage.
The Senate report warned that these substances have been directly linked to cancer, kidney and liver diseases, and foodborne infections such as cholera and Lassa fever.
The consequences, the lawmakers said, are staggering. In 2025 alone, Nigeria recorded over 14,000 cholera cases resulting in 378 deaths, while 119 people died from food-related Lassa fever infections.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that Nigerians suffer over one million cases of foodborne illnesses annually, costing the economy more than $3.6 billion in productivity losses and health expenses.
“These are not statistics,” one senator warned. “These are families — children and mothers — dying because we are eating chemically poisoned food.”
In response, the Senate resolved to strengthen existing laws, including Sections 243 to 245 of the Criminal Code, to prescribe tougher penalties for offenders involved in food adulteration.
The lawmakers also directed the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Services (NAQS), Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), and Nigeria Council of Food Science and Technology (NiCFOST) to immediately launch enforcement drives and nationwide sensitisation campaigns.
They warned that without urgent action, millions of Nigerians would remain exposed to chronic poisoning and disease from unsafe food.
“This is a national health emergency,” the Senate declared. “We must protect what Nigerians eat — from farm to table.”
The Senate’s resolution marks one of the most decisive legislative responses yet to Nigeria’s mounting food safety crisis. But lawmakers admitted that laws alone would not suffice without strong enforcement and public awareness.
The committees urged federal and state agencies to engage communities, schools, and marketplaces in continuous education campaigns while ensuring erring vendors face the full weight of the law.
As one senator put it bluntly during plenary: “Food is life — but in Nigeria today, food has become death served fresh.”
