NHF laments high rate of imported dairy products into Nigeria

The Nigerian Heart Foundation (NHF) has condemned the indiscriminate distribution of harmful milk products in the country, revealing that 80 percent of dairy products consumed in Nigeria are imported, according to research conducted by the organisation.

Speaking to journalists at the 2023 Commemoration of the United Nations’ World Milk Day in Lagos with the theme: Heart Healthy Milk, Nutritional Foods and Livelihoods, Dr Kingsley Akinroye, Executive Director of NHF, urged the new government of President Bola Tinubu to invest in and expand home-grown milk production to increase Nigerians’ life expectancy. Akinroye, who also refuted the notion that adults do not require milk, stated that milk should be drank from conception to old age.

“NHF is concerned about Nigerians living long through heart-healthy diets, hence the need for regular intake of heart-friendly milk in the country. Milk is food and it is a very important component of food we should be taking every day. We should take milk at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Milk is for everybody from the womb until 100 years.

Akinroye stressed the need for agricultural backup integration for the production of milk through the empowerment of farmers in the dairy business.

“In NHF, we are concerned about heart-healthy milk. Heart-healthy milk is milk that is low in saturated fat, has zero content of trans fat, low salt, and low sugar and that is why we are pushing the need to expand the production of milk in Nigeria. Our data so far tells us that not less than 80 per cent of the milk that we have today is imported into Nigeria and that is bad for our economy, health, life expectancy economy of the country and bad for the population of farmers. It is not good for our children and our youth that need employment.

“If 50 per cent of milk that Nigerians drink in Nigeria is produced within the country, a lot of people are going to be employed and lot children and adults are going to live healthily. “So, there is the need to expand milk production in Nigeria, and not only milk for the sake of it but a heart healthy milk. That area of agriculture needs to be expanded, and that is what we want our new President and Governors to focus on because we now know that milk is food and can make Nigerians live healthily. The country needs more investment in this area of agriculture. If we start nursing good children with milk content in their body, they will grow with good blood vessels, and the biggest blood vessel in the body is the heart. Their hearts and bones will be very healthy and they are bound to live longer,” he added.

Akinroye also said that the NHF, in its 32 years’ existence had done a lot of advocacies on how Nigerians could live healthy and long through food labelling by working with the Federal Government.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) founded World Milk Day in 2001 in recognition of the significance of milk as a global food source, according to Prof. Tola Atinmo, Chairman of the Nutrition Committee, NHF.