Firewood smoke kills over 93,000 people annually, says NGO

The Women’s Initiative for Sustainable Environment (WISE) and Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) have revealed that over 93,000 persons in the country, particularly women, die every year due to smoke inhalation, while cooking with firewood.

WISE Founder and Programme Director, Olanike Olugboji, who told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna, during a training organised for 30 women from different communities across the state on how to use clean and energy-efficient cooking stoves, said if a woman cooked breakfast, lunch and supper with firewood, the consequence of her action was equivalent to smoking three to 20 packets of cigarettes a day.

“Also, Nigeria’s fuelwood consumption is about 80 million cubic metres, making biomass fuel the most common source of household energy in Nigeria. The traditional cooking method using firewood burns 90 per cent more wood than is necessary; costing poor families a lot of money, which otherwise, could have been spent on education, health and nutrition, among others.