Prof. Samuel Oluwalana, a lecturer at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, has said Nigeria is losing a huge amount of money for its failure to export human faeces, cockroaches, and scorpions to foreign countries.
The lecturer noted that the American government gets $3.5 billion every year because it is used to protect astronauts in space.
The Professor of Forest Resources Management said this in Abeokuta while speaking on the theme, “Unearthing The Treasures In The Forest” at the 47th Annual General Meeting of the Abeokuta Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, Abeokuta.
The don also said that Nigeria has a great chance to get billions of naira from the exportation of a large number of cockroaches to China, where they are consumed.
He cited cases from indigenous knowledge, some of the uses of forest and animal resources for health, commerce and wealth creation.
He wondered why Nigeria, which is enormously blessed with vast forest resources, should be grappling with apocalyptic poverty and health challenges, citing cancer, diabetes, bile, hypertension, ovarian cysts, STDs, blocked fallopian tubes, infertility, and fibroids among health conditions that could be addressed using plants and animal resources from the nation’s enormous forest belts.
The don, therefore, urged Nigerians to pay attention to Indigenous Knowledge as a window for people to explore the wellspring of knowledge and experience that are relevant to them, describing indigenous knowledge as a gold mine, a veritable source of age-old methods of understanding the uses of nature as medicine and wealth.
According to him, one butterfly is bought for $500 in Singapore. We can imbibe the South African culture by producing bees. Cricket also generates money. Nigerian scorpion, one is $50,000.
“A gallon of 4.75 litres of the venom is $99 million. The Chinese are taking it away, no one is questioning them. Instead of destroying scorpions, you can sell them.
He added, “Cockroaches are the number one food now, we don’t eat cockroaches in Nigeria, they eat in other places, we can produce and send to them, and they will buy. There is a man in China, that has up to six billion cockroaches, overnight, he became a multi-billionaire.
“Human faeces can be processed into charcoal for cooking. Now, Americans will be making $3.5 billion every year from gold extracted from human faeces. They are also taking human faeces to space to protect the astronaut.
“In Kenya, human faeces are used to make bridges and build houses. There are new toilets that are constructed, it helps to convert human faeces to cooking fuel. Hydrogen can be made from human faeces. You can now transplant human faeces from one person to another. We need to be creative.”