NIGERIAN HUNTERS, BUSHMEAT SELLERS ALLEGE CONSPIRACY

Nigerian hunters and traders in bush meat have alleged that the Western world is out to conspire against Africans and use the threat of the virus to extort people on the continent.
The group, under the aegis of National Hunters Association of Nigeria, at a seminar organised over the dreaded virus in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, during the week, lampooned the Federal Ministry of Health for not first “tracing the virus to animals in the bush to be spreading same and transferring it to human beings after consumption.”
In a speech presented by the Olori-Ode General of National Hunters Association of Nigeria, Chief Olasehinde Afolabi Ishola, the hunters said “it is too injurious if the Federal Ministry of Health can come out with such propaganda without a thorough test of those animals and even without involving the hunters in such investigation, believing that such can yield good result.
“I want to restate that most of these animals are being used by our forefathers as alternative Medicare which is still working up till today.
“I want to be precise about the animal, bat, part of which is being used to cure women with problem of childbearing. Our fathers used parts of bat to prepare medical soup (aseje) for them and they get pregnant as well as deliver the baby safely. Antelope’s parts are also used for such purposes. How and when did they become carriers of Ebola virus in the bush? Has there been any change in the foods the animals eat in the bush?
Also, the legal adviser to the hunters’ association, Mr Adekunle Odekanmi, who spoke at the event, warned Africans to beware, as “Ebola virus is caused by nuclear reactors from toxic waste drums dropped in African oceans.”
In his speech, entitled; “Ebola Virus: Cause and Cure,” the legal practitioner insisted that “the Ebola epidemic is from the developed countries or world powers, comprising America, Russia, Japan and China. All these nations use African oceans and seas as their dumping ground for nuclear reactor wastes.”
He concluded by saying that “bats and monkeys or other wildlife eat vegetables; they do not have drug injections and so do not cause Ebola.”
But the representative of veterinary doctors in Oyo State, Mr Ibrahim Akande, who also spoke at the event, advised hunters not to touch any wildlife the source of which death they did not know.
He added that in 1976, when the Ebola virus was detected in people in Congo, it was also noted that many apes in the forests of the country were also found dead, adding that findings showed that the people possibly contracted the disease from the animals.
Source: Tribune