#OIL #SPILLAGE : Lagos, Ogun residents at risk of food poisoning, cancer

Many residents of Ogun State trooped to where a vegetable oil-laden tanker fell last Sunday, scooping its spilled content. This report is about the health implication of cooking with such contaminated oil

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Mr. Badmus had just finished his lunch – a bowl of ‘eba’ with ‘egusi’ soup, flushed down his stomach with a glass of orange juice – on Monday when he realised the ‘havoc’ his wife had done to him.

The ‘havoc,’ according to him, was: “My wife cooked the soup with the vegetable oil that was spilled on the road by a tanker on Sunday. I couldn’t believe it when I learned about it. I was so angry that I felt like throwing up the food. I don’t understand why I would give her money to buy NAFDAC-approved cooking oil and she would cook with the one that was spilled on the road side in such a dirty environment.”

Badmus, a resident of Orimerunmu, Ogun State, a town along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, apart from being embittered towards his wife, told Saturday PUNCH on a visit to the area that he was seriously concerned by the health implication of eating food cooked with vegetable oil that was spilled on the road.

In the early hours of Sunday, November 1, 2015, an 18-wheeler tanker carrying hundreds of gallons of vegetable oil to Lagos fell at the Orimerunmu area of Ogun State, spilling its content on the road.

In the twinkling of an eye, many residents of the area and neighbouring towns, including Olowotedo, Asese, Ibafo, Mowe and Magboro, got wind of the information, trooped to the scene of the accident with empty jerry cans and buckets, and loaded those objects with the spilled vegetable oil.

Both the young and the old, men and women, including pregnant women and those carrying babies on their backs, were said to have thronged the scene – to partake of the proverbial manna that had fallen down from heaven.

“Probably she thought I would be happy that we wouldn’t have to buy vegetable oil again for a very long time. I had travelled to Ibadan last week Friday for a programme and returned home on Monday morning. It was after I finished the food she gave me in the afternoon that I found two jerry cans of vegetable oil in the kitchen. I asked her where she got them from, knowing that I didn’t give her money to buy such a large quantity of oil, and she told me she fetched it from the one the tanker that fell had spilled on the road. I was mad,” he said.

Many people who scooped the oil perhaps regarded the tanker accident and the eventual spillage of its content as a blessing to them, but Badmus said it was not to him, knowing that the oil was fetched from a dirty surface.

On Tuesday when Saturday PUNCH visited the scene of the accident, it was observed that the surface where the oil was spilt was not far from a dung hill near the Orimierunmu Bus stop. The smell of the spilled oil was still pervasive as no clean-up had yet been initiated by any of the concerned government agencies.

Since the spillage occurred on the ever-busy road plied by thousands of vehicles entering Lagos State every day, there is a high possibility that dust and carbon particles from vehicle fumes must have settled on the oil before and even after people fetched it.

“Ideally, when something like that happens, the ministry of environment in the concerned state should have been there to initiate a clean-up. It’s unfortunate that some days after, nothing has been done,” an environmentalist based in Lagos, David Lawal, said. “It is a dirty environment people scooped the oil from and that should give any health- and safety-conscious individual worry.”

This is why Badmus said he was worried.

“I couldn’t imagine eating food cooked with that oil and that was why I was angry with my wife. I have asked her to dispose the oil off or give it to whoever wants it. What if I get sick from consuming the oil? My family health is more important to me than money,” he said.