Prof. Samuel Oluwalana, a lecturer at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, claims that Nigeria is losing a lot of money since it isn’t exporting human faeces, cockroaches, and scorpions to other countries.
The professor mentioned that the American government receives $3.5 billion every year to protect astronauts in space.
This was stated by the Professor of Forest Resources Management in Abeokuta during his speech on the theme “Unearthing The Treasures In The Forest” during the 47th Annual General Meeting of the Abeokuta Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture.
The don further stated that Nigeria stands to gain billions of naira from the exportation of a big number of cockroaches to China, where they are consumed.
He used indigenous knowledge to illustrate some applications of forest and animal resources for health, commerce, and wealth production.
He questioned why Nigeria, which has vast forest resources, is grappling with apocalyptic poverty and health challenges, citing cancer, diabetes, bile, hypertension, ovarian cysts, STDs, blocked fallopian tubes, infertility, and fibroids as health conditions that could be addressed using plants and animal resources from the country’s vast forest belts.
The don, as a result, 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 other natural resources.
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.”
