Some time ago, I watched on Nigeria NTA channel a programme in which the panellist said her company just made a deal with a Malaysian company and another company also outside the county to export Nigerian waste materials. As I knew we have a few machineries to recycle our waste materials locally, I was surprised to hear that we want to go international in waste industry. Several questions came to mind: Are we that mega waste producers that we could no longer process our wastes locally? Or is it because it is more profitable to export them aboard. Still, why should we go that far in waste management? Whatever may be the case, I found it difficult to make sense of exporting waste materials to Malaysia. It is simply preposterous!

We all know quite well how far Malaysia is. I wonder: “of all things we are blessed with in this country, why is it that it is the wastes that we should export to Malaysia: to boast our economy or to salvage our environment?”

Nigeria is rich in natural resources and provisions. Nigerian foodstuff are very expensive in Malaysia. In Chow Kit market in central Kuala Lumpur, as of early 2016, Nigerian beans cost RM24 per kg whereas others brought from other countries (like the one from USA, perhaps) cost RM9/10 per kg. Gari, a cassava fried flour, is outrageously expensive, patronised primarily by Nigerians and perhaps other African expatriates in Malaysia. These foods are brought to Malaysia on ad-hoc basis. I once even asked a group of my Malaysian female students to go and interview a small sized African shop in Chew Kit. I was very surprised to read in the report that that shop sells foodstuff for thousands of ringgit particularly on Saturdays and Sundays. A few of Nigerian foodstuff are produced locally for the expatriates. One standing example is animal hide, popularly called “ponmo” in Yoruba, “fata or ganda” in Hausa and “kanda” in Igbo, which the Nigerian Government attempted to proscribe in 2022 due to its nutritional value or to revive the comatose leather industry. The attempt failed miserably.

Malaysians like many other nations do not consume ponmo. During my first 10 years in Malaysia in 1990s/2000s, I never spotted ponmo in Malaysian markets. However, due to a high demand by Nigerian consumers, Malaysians slowly gave in. The first time I saw ponmo at Malaysian market happened to be in a small food kios at a Kuala Lumpur pasar malam, a night market highly patronised by local marketers and buyers. Weird!; this must be an isolated case, perhaps the marketer was married to a Nigerian expatriate, I assumed. A few years later, on one good Sunday morning, I went to Chow Kit wet market to buy foodstuff for my family. One Malay marketer waved at me and said “hi guy, come here to buy ponmo”. I got closer as if I did not hear what he just said and asked him to repeat. Then he showed it to me and said “I have ponmo of different types: thick and skinned ones. It is very delicious; I will give you a special discount….” I wondered how this talkative marketer knew I am a Nigerian and precisely Yoruba speaker who understood the word “ponmo”, even though I have no facial mark whatsoever. Overwhelmed to hear this local marketer speaking my mother tongue, I promptly bought two kg of ponmo even though ponmo was not on the list of items I planned to purchase. Hmm, nawa o omo naija, a people of ponmo economy home and abroad, ready to export ponmo industry and internationalise its processing and consumption!

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Back to the waste materials. Of recent, when I was going to office along Okolowo highway connecting the South West with the North Central Nigeria, I saw a trailer fully loaded with waste materials. Actually, it was not the first time to see such thing on the highway in broad daylight, but it was the first time I would see it after the NTA programme I watched. This heavily loaded trailer with wastes caught my attention and brought to my mind the waste exportation deal. I immediately took a snapshot of the trailer as our car got closer. As you can see in the attached snapshot, the trailer is fully loaded with waste materials. No space is wasted without waste. Every possible space was not left unfilled with waste materials. On the top, there was a gatekeeper to ensure that no further waste is wasted.

This scenario reinforced my conviction and early research findings that in “nature” there is no waste per se and that waste is simply a mental and cultural construct, having no objective reality in the natural world. Yet, I remained perplexed as to why it was the waste materials we should export to Malaysia for recycling. The sea on which waste exporting ships sail is definitely the same sea ships exporting other more valuable materials sail. Since exporting these waste materials certainly does not make the distance between Nigeria and Malaysia shorter nor, perhaps, the fare of sea freight cheaper, why shouldn’t we export other things that are more economically profitable, socially dignifying and environmentally friendlier?

To Nigerian consumers: Malaysian made products you purchase in local markets are probably “back to sender”. To Nigerian expatriates in Malaysia: Malaysian made products you purchase are probably “used first in Nigeria”.

Abdul Kabir Hussain Solihu
Kwara State University
28th May, 2023