How much do you like ponmo?
“The food is delicious but there was no ponmo”. President Olusegun Obasanjo was credited to have said the statement at the end of a sumptuous evening of food and drinks. The question what is this ponmo thing that made our President to rue its lack at dinner?
Ponmo is supposed to be smoked cowhide preserved dry for future use when the dried parchment is cooked long enough to soften it and then soaked in cold water. At the end of all these processes, the dried cowhide is transformed into an edible piece of meat that is well loved by all Nigerians.
Traditionally, this piece of meat was the exclusive delight of the not so affluent. The rich never touched it because it is said to contain no nutritional value. But all that has changed in that its acceptability cuts across economic and ethnic strata. Ponmo is a national food item in Nigeria. It can be served on meals or diced into bits and added as additives to almost all known Nigerian soups.
Nowadays, ponmo is big business with tremendous export prospects. Moneybags are already into the business and this is what is getting some of us agitated given the new twist to the whole ponmo making industry.
There has been a rising trend of departure from the known cowhide to the use of goat and sheep skins as ponmo. And the worrying side of this new practice is that the goat/sheep skins used are waste residues of tanning industries.
Rejects
When tanners buy skins, they buy the best. To get good value, skin sellers will preserve his merchandise using industrial salt or sodium chloride. This process is called curing. Once the merchant tanner buys the skin, he cuts off the legs, neck and tail aspects to make the skin fit into his machine appropriately. These discarded parts or rejects are harvested from the waste bins by our new ponmo merchants. This is the first and more common kind of skin used as ponmo.
Lime loss skins.
Once the skin gets into the tanners” factory, it begins to go through a battery of highly chemicalised processes. The skin is soaked, for instance, in lime, water and sodium sulphide for upwards of 9days. Then again, it is dipped in another acidic chemical solution with the aim of deliming and bating the skin. Along this time also, the skin will be de-haired by a machine called fleshing machine.
Now, any waste resulting from mis-feeding, human error, technical machine problem and uneven edges are separated from the lot and taken to the waste bin again. This waste is the lime loss waste. And quite unfortunately, our ponmo merchants will equally harvest this unsightly, highly chemicalised waste and get them into the markets for human consumption. And this is where we worry for health concerns.
The lime loss is not immediately recoverable from the tanneries; they stay in the waste bins for days, becoming maggot infested and smelly. The sight is really appalling.
End product
Yet, our people will pack these skins, have them transported to Galadima side of Kano Market or take them to the Abattoir where there are boys whose jobs it is to burn the skin and make them into ponmo. Of course, there will be marked difference between this kind of ponmo and cowhide ponmo, but the buyers of this kind of skins who are restaurateurs know how to make the final product look every inch like cowhide. They also dice them easily into bits for their soups.
This is where we invite NAFDAC to please do further investigation into this matter and get Nigerians adequately informed of the hazards that stare at them in the face from eating such unwholesome preparation.
“The food is delicious but there was no ponmo”. President Olusegun Obasanjo was credited to have said the statement at the end of a sumptuous evening of food and drinks. The question what is this ponmo thing that made our President to rue its lack at dinner?
Ponmo is supposed to be smoked cowhide preserved dry for future use when the dried parchment is cooked long enough to soften it and then soaked in cold water. At the end of all these processes, the dried cowhide is transformed into an edible piece of meat that is well loved by all Nigerians.
Traditionally, this piece of meat was the exclusive delight of the not so affluent. The rich never touched it because it is said to contain no nutritional value. But all that has changed in that its acceptability cuts across economic and ethnic strata. Ponmo is a national food item in Nigeria. It can be served on meals or diced into bits and added as additives to almost all known Nigerian soups.
Nowadays, ponmo is big business with tremendous export prospects. Moneybags are already into the business and this is what is getting some of us agitated given the new twist to the whole ponmo making industry.
There has been a rising trend of departure from the known cowhide to the use of goat and sheep skins as ponmo. And the worrying side of this new practice is that the goat/sheep skins used are waste residues of tanning industries.
Rejects
When tanners buy skins, they buy the best. To get good value, skin sellers will preserve his merchandise using industrial salt or sodium chloride. This process is called curing. Once the merchant tanner buys the skin, he cuts off the legs, neck and tail aspects to make the skin fit into his machine appropriately. These discarded parts or rejects are harvested from the waste bins by our new ponmo merchants. This is the first and more common kind of skin used as ponmo.
Lime loss skins.
Once the skin gets into the tanners” factory, it begins to go through a battery of highly chemicalised processes. The skin is soaked, for instance, in lime, water and sodium sulphide for upwards of 9days. Then again, it is dipped in another acidic chemical solution with the aim of deliming and bating the skin. Along this time also, the skin will be de-haired by a machine called fleshing machine.
Now, any waste resulting from mis-feeding, human error, technical machine problem and uneven edges are separated from the lot and taken to the waste bin again. This waste is the lime loss waste. And quite unfortunately, our ponmo merchants will equally harvest this unsightly, highly chemicalised waste and get them into the markets for human consumption. And this is where we worry for health concerns.
The lime loss is not immediately recoverable from the tanneries; they stay in the waste bins for days, becoming maggot infested and smelly. The sight is really appalling.
End product
Yet, our people will pack these skins, have them transported to Galadima side of Kano Market or take them to the Abattoir where there are boys whose jobs it is to burn the skin and make them into ponmo. Of course, there will be marked difference between this kind of ponmo and cowhide ponmo, but the buyers of this kind of skins who are restaurateurs know how to make the final product look every inch like cowhide. They also dice them easily into bits for their soups.
This is where we invite NAFDAC to please do further investigation into this matter and get Nigerians adequately informed of the hazards that stare at them in the face from eating such unwholesome preparation.
