Sometimes, a matter that is very much on one\u2019s mind might just pop out of the blue to one\u2019s pleasant surprise. I experienced this recently when the governor of Kebbi State, Nasir Idris, gave a directive to his Ministry of Environment. Officials are to identify a forest reserve in Kalgo Local Government Area for cultivating and preserving indigenous medicinal plants. Idris gave this instruction when he received the leaders of the Coalition of the National Association of Nigerian Traditional Medicine Practitioners, Kebbi State chapter. It\u2019s obvious the governor doesn\u2019t belittle what\u2019s indigenous to us as some do, a phenomenon I\u2019ve commented on several times here. According to Idris, he took the step he did because \u201cWe do not want our traditional medicine to vanish.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
As it turns out, his state hosts a large network of over 40,000 traditional medicine practitioners. I wonder if medical doctors in western medicine have that number in Nigeria, let alone Kebbi State. For me, the number reflects the importance of herbal medicine in community healthcare in this northwestern state. And it\u2019s neither a new or unsual phenomenon. Many of us know that our people use roots and herbs at a rate no official record has fully captured. This makes me wonder why we call our own traditional medical practice alternative medicine. In many communities, traditional medicine is the orthodox medicine. I once noted on this page how, in the 1930s (less than 100 years ago), British colonial officers in the northwest were celebrating that locals had begun to cautiously approach newly constructed Western clinics. Today, many locals still trust and depend on native medicine more than Western variants. For this reason, the need to preserve medicinal plants is something that\u2019s always on my mind, considering the rate our forests are being depleted.\n<\/p>\n
I like nature, I like forests, and I have a huge appreciation of the gifts of nature that are hidden in them. I grew up in a federal research institute with the serenity of nature all around me. Aside from rare timber, the next item of concern to me is the medicinal plants that are being lost at an alarming rate with the depletion of forests. Some of these rare plants found only in the tropics are not only health, but they\u2019re also wealth. As such, one doesn\u2019t need to be a plant scientist or traditional medical practitioner to recognise the danger deforestation constitutes. All that one needs to see are the constant posts online of plants that are so common that we overlook, but those who know say such plants have properties that can cure so many ailments. As a nature enthusiast, such information is of interest to me. More than this, I\u2019ve paid attention to information that tells how some entities in Western nations dedicate themselves to preserving plants that have medicinal properties. Some of them are private organisations doing their best to assist mankind in preserving these gifts of nature. Some foreign scientists come to the African continent to collect these plants, which they take to their countries for preservation purposes.\n<\/p>\n
This observation makes me wonder when Nigerian governments and scientists will do something similar. Now Kebbi State governor provides an answer. He does so at a time when large-scale destruction of the natural habitats of medicinal plants continues without any care on the part of everyone who should have it as their official task. I suppose when these plants are wiped out, then one day we turn to foreign nations, asking them to donate to us samples of the plants they took from us in the first place. It\u2019s the pattern in most matters, and this should be of concern to all of us. Must we always depend on foreigners for the safekeeping of what belongs to us? It\u2019s a question political leaders need to ask and take a decision about. A political leader doesn\u2019t need to be a scientist to take the step Governor Idris did. All it takes is for one to have an awareness of natural\u00a0 medicinal properties as well as economic benefits packed into plants. Nations such as China and India have a medical ecosystem that benefits from this awareness. Both nations are leading examples of how traditional medicine has been part of general\u00a0 medical practice for decades. Many natural items taken from the African continent go to those nations where traditional medical practice has become some sort of medical tourism. People from Western nations travel to China and India to receive traditional treatments for issues that defy Western medicine.<\/p>\n
Across the world, naturally derived drugs account for the majority of drugs approved since 1981. To buttress the importance of medicinal plants, majority of the population in underdeveloped parts of the world, especially Africa, still relies on herbal medicine, mostly of plant origin or a combination of plants. As researches have established, this is attributable to the efficacy, affordability and perceived safety of these plants. In an academic work by Babangida Abubakar and others, it\u2019s demonstrated that different studies on medicinal plants continuously provide a platform for the potential discovery of novel compounds from uninvestigated and scarcely investigated plants. Such discoveries will be impossible if these plants are lost. The authors also note that in Nigeria, plants and herbal medicine continue to play a critical role as an alternative and affordable healthcare option for various diseases such as cancer, microbial infections, and diabetes, among others. They state further that Kebbi State in particular has a rich repository of medicinal plants. <\/p>\n
In the entire northwestern Nigeria where Kebbi State is located, according to Abubakar and others, the majority of residents still heavily rely on traditional medicines from plants which have proven to be effective. In addition, Kebbi State is very rich in traditional healing knowledge. Local studies in the state document well over 130 distinct plant species used to treat various viral infections, malaria, and other ailments. On their own, local traditional medicine practitioners have tried to preserve these vital botanical resources.\n<\/p>\n
Now, the state governor has stepped forward in a big way. His effort will help traditional medical practice, and it\u2019s a worthy cause considering that in Western nations both government and private institutions are involved in the conservation and preservation of medicinal plants. In fact, governments out there take such preservation as a national priority, and they allocate resources to facilitate the process. Out there, medicinal plants and their properties are preserved through a combination of legal habitat protection, controlled cultivation, high-tech germplasm storage, and scientific documentation.<\/p>\n
These nations use structured bio-conservation frameworks to prevent the extinction of valuable flora. Government environmental agencies establish national parks, nature reserves, and protected public lands where native medicinal herbs grow in their natural ecosystems. There are\u00a0 strict regional regulations and permit systems which control the collection of vulnerable wild species such as Arnica or American ginseng, thereby preventing over-collection. Public and university-run gardens maintain living collections of rare and useful therapeutic plants for research and public education.\u00a0\u00a0 Facilities store dried seeds at very low temperatures or freeze plant tissues in liquid nitrogen to preserve the genetic blueprints of endangered medicinal species indefinitely.\u00a0 Laboratories use plant tissue culture and cloning techniques to rapidly multiply disease-free medicinal plants which ensures that the plants\u2019 wild populations are not depleted.\n<\/p>\n
Moreover, physically pressed plant specimens are stored in climate-controlled museum archives, while digital phytochemical databases map out plant DNA, chemical traits, and traditional uses. Official medical registries document standardised preparation methods and quality controls for plant-derived medicines to keep historical and clinical knowledge intact. There are also large libraries of pressed and dried plant specimens used by scientists to record global biodiversity and accurately classify plant species.\u00a0 Specific institutions involved in such endeavours include The Chelsea Garden in London, UK, founded in 1673, which features dedicated pharmaceutical and world-medicine garden beds. The Padua Botanical Garden in Italy was established in 1545, originally built to cultivate medicinal simples. And there\u2019s the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary in Ohio, United States, which focuses explicitly on conserving native, at-risk medicinal woodland plants.\n<\/p>\n
When will Africa, and Nigeria in particular, enter this race to preserve nature\u2019s gifts? Of all the work of conservation happening in Nigeria, the one on medicinal plants is done the least. Governor Idris\u2019 initiative is the first I hear of coming from any government. Private bodies need to be involved in this worthy endeavour for now and for the unborn generation. But such public-spirited effort that doesn\u2019t present immediate gains and publicity hardly catches the interest of many in our nation. The pattern needs to change, and here Governor Idris has set the ball rolling. I call on him to give this initiative the needed legal backing so that it continues into the future. Also, I urge him to take keen interest in the execution of the directive he gave. By seeing this through, he\u2019ll have left a mark that many Nigerians will continue to appreciate him for.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes, a matter that is very much on one\u2019s mind might just pop out of the blue to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[191127,248356,102,9092,14230,248357,6591,23021,248358,158611,248359,23356,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-752111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-community-health","tag-forest-reserve","tag-health","tag-herbal-medicine","tag-indigenous-knowledge","tag-kebbi-state","tag-medication","tag-medicinal-plants","tag-nasir-idris","tag-nigerian-healthcare","tag-plant-preservation","tag-traditional-medicine","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}