Professor Stella Iwuagwu is a public health expert, director of Sustainable Demonstration Farms (SDF) in Orozo, Abuja, and executive director Centre for the Right to Health (CRH). In this interview with PAUL OKAH, she explains that she relocated from the United States in 2015 to become a public health farmer in order to curb maternal mortality and other forms of avoidable deaths resulting from unhealthy food, toxic environment, among others.
Why Sustainable Development Farms?
I call myself a public health farmer. Over 25 years, I have been in the area of public health advocacy. If you did a little research, you will find out that I have been involved in the area of HIV/AIDS, right to health and issues around them. I came back to Nigeria and realised that things have been getting worse in the health sector and I started asking why. The health budget has dropped, infrastructure dilapidated, things have simply fallen apart, yet the population keeps growing by the day and people are getting sicker everyday. In my village, you could get anything you want from the backyard. However, when I got home, they were practically buying everything from the market.
I started looking at the malnutrition rate and saw that a lot of children under-five are malnourished. If children are malnourished, you can imagine what the state of the mothers are, because no mother would eat while the child is hungry, so that contributes to our maternal mortality rate. So, at Centre for the Right to Health (CRH), one of the things we do is taking help to communities in rural areas. We realised that women are dying. I realised that we cannot get to the right to health until we get to the right to food. They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but are people eating the apple? Our people are being killed by what they have been eating. This is as a result of too much chemicals, pesticides, and vehicle and generator fumes. Sometimes, you get so enamoured with the canned and processed foods and preservatives contributing to poor health. You have diabetes, kidney, heart and liver failures here and there; I mean, they are triggered by many of these chemicals, even over there. They send these chemicals to us and we use them to manufacture foods, but you can’t export most of these foods. They want organic food over there because it is wholesome.
What we are not eating is also killing us. Without balanced diets, our system cannot function. We feel deprived because we are not feeding our cells. When our cells are fed, your immune system will perform optimally. The more people have poor immune system, because of poor eating habit, the more people we will have in our health system. It was on that premise that I felt we have to intervene. Our slogan is “there is no right to health without the right to healthy food and healthy environment.” This is because we are eating food, but it is not healthy. It is killing us. I had to look at the environment too, because it is filled with toxins. All the chemicals and pesticides we use do not even stay in the plants. They come out in the environment, causing climate change and threat to the whole world and we are contributing to it.
What is the relationship between SDF and Sustainable Development Goals?
How long you live is determined by the kind of food you eat and the kind of place you live. That is the social determinant of health. We cannot just focus on health and neglect the foundations of good health and wellness. We are dealing with disease-care. When you are looking at health care and the things we will do to keep healthy, good food is number one, followed by the kind of environment we live in. Looking at it from the Sustainable Development Goals, when people eat well, we have shot down the bird of zero hunger. When we make sure they eat healthy food and stay in a healthy environment, goal number two will be achieved, that is healthcare. The other goal is poverty. People are spending so much money on health. Therefore, it is either you pay your farmer or you pay your doctor. If you eat well, your healthcare cost will crash and you will have money in your pocket.
What we are doing is teaching people how to grow their own food in their own backyard so that they will have what to eat and excess to sell. When you start selling, you will become an agropreneur and tackle zero poverty. Also, a hungry child cannot learn. UNESCO four pillar of education talks about learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. However, we are not paying much attention to learning to do and that’s part of what the farm’s agenda is about. We want to get our educational system to shift from just learning to know to learning to do. What they teach in schools, is it what people need to know about surviving at these perilous times? So, we teach basic skills to feed your cells, to do things with your hands.
You said something about the environment…
Of course, climate change is a major issue. We have a concept here. There is no waste in nature. Everything can be recycled. When you throw your pure water sachet into trash cans and pay someone to dispose it, you are disposing money, because waste can be recycled. Everything can be recycled to generate money and that’s part of what we are teaching here. The plastics, pure water sachets flow back into our soil and that scares me, because our soil is contaminated. The roots cannot start struggling with nylon bags and it takes hundreds of years for these plastics to break down. They are releasing toxins, which flows down into the gutters and we are complaining of flood.
Meanwhile, we are all contributing to the problem. The floods and chemicals end up in the rivers and are eaten by fishes. Then fishermen will bring the same fish for us to eat and die. So, we teach people how these things connect so that solving one would lead to solving others. We want to attack the problem at its foundation. That’s the reason I started Sustainable Demonstration Farm. It is sustainable because we want to ensure that we continue to take proper care of our health. Mine may be a small place or a small idea, but if people imbibe the idea, we will begin to solve fundamental challenges.
My dream is that my type of farm should be in every community, city, local government area and university. We have students that come here for SIWES or IT, who have spent five years in the university, but have never seen a rabbit. Some have no clue about snails, others could not tell the difference between a potato leaf and beans leaf. So, we are a bridge between the Ivory Towers and communities. We want to implement the big researches by the university and make them accessible to the community. When students come here, I make sure they come with a research agenda. When you research, you will get answers and solution to problems. Even if your findings cannot lead to a solution, you must have learnt something through your research.
So, the slogan that health is wealth applies here?
The Bible says “feed my flock.” For me, this is not just an economic agenda: it is a spiritual agenda. We call it the return to Eden. Eden is a place of wholeness, a place where there is food in abundance, peace and joy. If we can return to Eden by growing food in our landscape, everybody will have good food. All we have to do is to tend the Garden of Eden God has given us and then have enough to go round. When it because a success, all the conflict we are having will be no more. There is insecurity in Nigeria because people feel they are not getting enough food or what rightly belongs to them. People will stop killing each other because of food if there can grow organic pawpaw to exchange with yam and other types of food. If pastors plant food crops in the church landscape, they will have enough to give out and feed the flock, instead of depending on tithes to live. Even in schools, we want to teach them how to plant. Right now, people are bottling and selling health products harnessed from agricultural products, so I look forward to Nigerians taking advantage of the population to produce health products from agriculture to market and be self employed. If you are tending your garden, you will be physically fit. There is nothing better than growing your seed. If we look after our environment, we will prosper.
Do you train farmers here?
We have a curriculum we use to train people. Many people retire from the civil service without a clue of what to do; so they die of boredom. It is not supposed to be so. They should come and experiment here, gain confidence and set up their own farms. We want to see rabbits and other birds in every home. We have outlets in Area 8, Area One and developing another one in Wuse Zone 5 where we sell organic foods. We hope to partner with people to have wholesome organic food. We call it farm-to-office-to-home, where we sell hygienically packaged organic foods to people. We partner other farms and get what we don’t have from them. When you buy products from farmers, you get healthy products for cheaper prices. So, we hope there will be a farmer market in the country. Students come for excursions here, including couples. We have birthdays in the farm too, as some people just want to come and eat wholesome meals. Many Nigerians don’t know how to cook vegetables and meat; so, we do cooking demonstrations and trainings. We may be a small team in search of funding, but we have noble ideas and will expand.
Do you partner other NGOs to achieve your objectives?
In 1992, at the height of the HIV epidemic, we formed many organisations to tackle public health issues. Even then, there was a lot of difference between what I was taught in school and what was happening. So, I had two choices: follow the bandwagon or go against the grain. I chose to go against the grain, believing human beings should be treated with dignity. I got involved too much in HIV because I saw it as a problem then, just as I am doing with the farm now. That’s why I started CRH. If we get health professionals to treat HIV patients with dignity, they will extend that to other patients. From there, it opened up to other things. Look out for the case of Georgina Ahamefuna and Imperial Medical centre. It was one of the cases we took to court when I was working with SERAC. If we can sue a mechanic for messing up with a car, we can also sue doctors for messing with our bodies, not to leave it to God and allow the malpractices to continue. Lack of consequences breeds impunity; so, we are teaching patients to know their rights and seek redress when wronged. I have a lot of videos on programmes we have done. Failed by Angels is one of them, which shows failure of health professionals we regard as angels. What people don’t realise is that the carer may one day become the cared for. I had an accident in Zaria in 2007 when I visited Nigeria. Ahmadu Bello Teaching Hospital was just five minutes away, but I couldn’t go there because health professionals were on strike. I was first taken to a maternity then the national hospital, to tell you how severe the accident was. Someone chartered an aeroplane and flew me to Ghana and from there to the US. So, we must learn to be each other’s angel. We should report failure on the part of health professionals and not say the person didn’t die. My life has been a revolving door of blessings as I always attempted to solve identifiable problems. Therefore, the whole world showed up when I had a problem.
What is the staff strength of the farm?
We have staff strength of 12 to 15 people and students. It is not enough, but we are not deterred. We are just an inspiration for other people to emulate and replicate in a larger space. I told one of our students that what they are being taught in school is obsolete. There are things they learn here that their teachers don’t even know. This is just the beginning as we want to change how things are done. We have one hectare space here in Orozo, but there are other places we want to start operating, especially the one we call the Nature Retreat. We want to replicate what we are doing here in a bigger space, though we have challenges of funding. I could sit down and write proposals and take to different offices in search of funding, but I wasn’t patient. My type of idea is called power of conviction. So, I invested all my retirement money in it. I have done my best; it is now for sponsors to come in. I had the option of staying back in America and being taken care of by the American government, but I am here because I am convinced it is the right thing to do.
Do you still have time to practise medicine?
I started this project in 2016, a year after I returned from the United States. I am a nurse and public health professional, but I now call myself public health farmer. I had to go to the upstream. For 25 years, what we were doing was carrying dead bodies out and I got tired of that. I am tired of women giving birth to dead babies and dying in my arms, especially after experiencing one day of malaria. If I can teach women to grow food and eat well, they will not be malnourished to die in my arms and I will achieve my goal of being a nurse midwife. What is the point of being a nurse, midwife when the baby or mother is not alive? People ask if I have left health for agriculture, but I tell them I am still in it, even more committed now than before. In America, there is a movement for food as medicine. They give people hampers of food, because they know you can’t solve problems with pizzas. But here we are glorifying the same pizza that America is trying to get rid of. Someone needs to tell our people the truth and open their eyes, because we are eating poison.
What are your achievements and challenges as a public health expert?
I am instrumental to founding most of the NGOs on reproductive health. CRH is over 20 years old and we have built capacities with different organisations and networks. We are also part of even Journalists Against AIDS. I have never achieved anything alone; that’s why we have been involved with different NGOs. At the height of HIV/AIDS, we went upstream and partnered with newspaper editors for free adverts on ethical reporting to avoid people being killed for being HIV positive. We still have a long way to go and we need partners so that government can come and provide infrastructure here in Orozo. Since we started this farm, we have not had electricity because of transformer issues in the community. We have been running the farm on inverters and generators. I need about N800, 000 to buy 16 batteries for the inverters. This is a capital intensive project. Water is also a problem because you need power to generate the water. We have a borehole, but one is not enough to meet this size. We need multiple boreholes. We have sent proposals to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, but we are still waiting. In this country, there are many philanthropists. One person can wake up a day and fix our road, give us a transformer, give us a borehole and encourage what we are doing now. Apart from the capitals, we need technical experts. Many of us are not professional farmers, we are just passionate about solving a problem and we have been doing our best. We need volunteers. Farm hands are difficult to get. Going organic is difficult, the reason people are using dangerous chemicals instead of weeding because it is expensive and people want cheap food. Here, we do everything by hand and that is expensive. Even at that, we still struggle to get people to buy our products at premium prices.
