National Wire About Nigerians, Nigerian Business and Other Stories
By Dayo Emmanuel
Stories about politics, economy, crimes and entertainment often dominate front pages of Nigerian newspapers and prime-time broadcasts, yet, quietly and steadily, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are tightening their grip on the country’s population, driven largely by unhealthy diets, excessive salt consumption and low nutrition literacy.
It is this silent public health emergency that brought journalists, civil society actors and health experts together in Lagos on 5th February, at a journalism training organised by Corporate Accountability & Public Participation Africa (CAPPA).
The workshop, focused on salt reduction and Front-of-Pack Labelling (FOPL), was designed to strengthen journalists’ understanding of the science, policy and industry practices shaping what Nigerians eat and how those choices are fuelling non communicable diseases such as hypertension, stroke, cancer and diabetes.
Beyond reporting events, participants were challenged to interrogate food systems, scrutinise labels and hold both government and industry accountable.
Opening discussions on the medical foundations of the crisis, Dr. Joseph Ekiyor, a Public Health Consultant and General Physician, delivered a presentation on Unhealthy Diets and the Burden of Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Nigeria. He warned that NCDs now represent one of the most significant health risks facing Nigerians, largely because their development is slow, cumulative and often ignored until complications emerge.
According to Ekiyor, one of the most dangerous habits among Nigerians is assumption especially in relation to symptoms such as dizziness, which many people casually attribute to low blood sugar.
“I don’t think it is right to say when you feel dizzy, then you have low sugar. If you feel dizzy, the best is to have a medical evaluation to know the cause,” he advised.
He explained that in clinical practice, dizziness rarely results from low blood sugar in people who are not on insulin. “In practice, we have never seen one person who is feeling dizzy and was not on insulin, because the body can recruit sugar when you eat and it is digested, it is stored in the muscles,” he said.
According to him, the human body has a sophisticated system for regulating blood sugar, drawing from stored reserves when food intake is delayed, particularly to protect the brain, which depends almost entirely on glucose for energy. “In the event the person does not eat, the body has a way of collecting from storage so that it doesn’t get from the brain, because the brain can’t survive on any other source of energy, except from sugar,” he said.
Ekiyor warned that misinterpreting symptoms and improvising treatment could worsen long-term health outcomes. “So if your body sugar is normal and you feel dizzy, and you are improvising, over time, your blood sugar will go up. It is best to seek medical consultation to know what is causing dizziness,” he said, linking this behaviour to broader lifestyle risks, particularly excessive salt consumption.
“About salt. If you take it long enough in excessive proportion, your BP will go up. It takes years of this habit before you start seeing the results of your bad choices,” he cautioned. According to him, the delayed manifestation of hypertension often gives people a false sense of safety. “Some people do it for 10 years before they start to reap the results or their choices.”
For Ekiyor, the solution lies not in extreme dietary restrictions but in informed moderation and lifestyle change. “The bottom line is to take excess salt out of the system,” he said. He emphasised physical activity, especially cardiovascular exercise, as a frontline intervention. “What we advise in medicine is exercise, physical exercise, most specifically cardio, 30 minutes of cardio per day.”
Exercise, he explained, helps regulate blood pressure partly by enabling salt excretion through sweat. “It makes your heart beat fast and makes you to sweat, because when you taste your sweat, it is salty,” he noted. “The first line of treatment for BP is lifestyle modification… reduce salt intake and increase the salt you take out via exercise.”
He clarified that salt itself is not the enemy. “This is not saying avoid salt. Sodium and chloride are important electrolytes in the body, they serve important functions. You need them, but if too much, it is a problem,” he said, stressing the importance of regular medical testing rather than assumptions. “That is why test is important before something serious happens, you have to have your medical consultation regularly.”
While Ekiyor laid the medical groundwork, Bukola Olukemi Odele, Programme Officer, Cardiovascular Health at CAPPA, focused on the policy and consumer information gap driving unhealthy choices. Speaking on Salt Target, Front-of-Pack Labeling (FOPL) as Policy Tools for Combatting Non-Communicable Disease Burden, Odele argued that Nigeria’s nutrition crisis is rooted in low public awareness.
“Nigeria has low nutrition literacy. Our diets are getting westernised by the day, the internet has turned the world to a global village, and we are fast moving from our traditional diet into consuming ultra-processed food,” she said.
This shift, she noted, has serious health and economic implications. “So we need to know the intensity of what we are consuming, and that non communicable diseases are putting our health at risk and imposing a financial burden on us and even on the government.”
Central to addressing this gap is Front-of-Pack Labelling, which Odele described as a simple but powerful tool for guiding consumer choice. “What is Front-of-Pack-Labeling and how do we come out of this situation and reduce salt consumption?” she asked participants.
According to her, FOPL works by translating complex nutritional data into easily recognisable symbols. “When you pick a particular food product, you just see it high in salt, or you see a color code or a symbol. So when you see it, you just say this is danger, whether you have gone to school or not,” she explained.
“You don’t need to start calculating, the front of Park label has done the calculation for you, and it just put a logo telling you that this food is high in sugar,” she said.
She illustrated different FOPL models, including warning labels and the traffic-light system used in the United Kingdom. “The green shows you it is healthy. Amber shows you it is not good, but not extremely bad… and red is telling you this is danger,” she said. “These are things we want in Nigeria, so that consumers can make informed decisions about their food check.”
However, Odele stressed that Nigeria must adopt a system that aligns with local realities. “Which one will our people see and be able to relate with, research is going on on this,” she said.
She placed the discussion within Nigeria’s broader disease profile, noting that “presently, non communicable diseases account for 29% of deaths in Nigeria,” with cardiovascular diseases responsible for 11 percent of that figure. She said that, 27 percent of Nigerian adults are overweight, a trend she linked to urbanisation, insecurity-driven migration and declining physical activity.
“In rural communities, people live from farm to fork,” she said. “But coming to the cities… we are forced to live urban lifestyle, living on noodles, tomato paste.” This lifestyle shift, she argued, has increased dependence on ultra-processed foods rich in sodium.
According to Odele, about 75 percent of sodium consumed by Nigerians comes from ultra-processed foods, including seasoning cubes. “If we can reduce the ultra processed food, we would have reduced our salt intake by over 70% and our seasoning cubes contain 20,000 mg in a cube,” she said, stressing that Nigeria must align with WHO salt-reduction recommendations.
Providing further insight into industry practices, Dr. Jerome Mafeni, Technical Advisor at the Network of Health, Equity and Development (NHED), presented on FOPL Research & Design: The Pathway to a People-Driven FOPL Policy. He disclosed that industry-commissioned studies show that over 90 percent of Nigerian households use seasoning cubes.
“The reason people use it is because of the taste. What you are putting is concentrated salt,” he said, describing how cubes are produced from already salted meat stock and further fortified with salt. “We are already killing ourselves with salt because of taste, and they market it very well,” he warned, criticising misleading health claims.
From the regulatory perspective, Mr. Femi Stephen, Food Safety Technical Lead at the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, acknowledged the complexity of sodium reduction. “I can’t give a specific timeline… because a research is ongoing,” he said, explaining that sodium reduction guidelines require phased implementation.
He highlighted stark gaps between Nigerian food products and WHO standards, noting that bread in Nigeria contains about 900mg of sodium per 100g, compared to WHO’s recommended 370mg. Seasoning cubes, he said, contain up to 22,000mg of sodium per cube, far above WHO’s 13,000mg benchmark.
“Our goal is to get to the standard of the WHO,” Stephen said, stressing gradual reduction to protect jobs while safeguarding health. He called on civil society and the media to act as watchdogs, noting, “We can’t be everywhere. When you see something, you say something.”
For the journalists in attendance, the training highlights a clear message: reporting on health goes beyond statistics but it demands sustained scrutiny of food systems, consumer information and policy enforcement.
As Nigeria grapples with rising NCDs, informed journalism may prove as critical as any medical intervention in shaping healthier choices and saving lives.
