Syndicate Behind Poisonous Ponmo Has Been Busted!!!

THE relentless search for the syndicate behind the distribution of a poisonous brand of cow hide delicacy, popularly called ponmo, finally yielded result last Saturday.

Two weeks ago, The Nation had broken the story that poisonous ponmo was in circulation in Lagos. And, following the wide reactions it generated, the reporter went about the task of unravelling the syndicate behind the unwholesome business and how they normally delivered the poisonous item at a big warehouse in lgando area of the Lagos metropolis.

Around 2:00pm penultimate Friday, the reporter had got a call from a dependable source who lived around College Road in lgando, alerting him to the arrival of a new consignment of the ponmo in question from Senegal, imported by some Lebanese businessmen and about to be offloaded at the usual warehouse in the vicinity, owned by one Mrs. Animashahun, an alleged major distributor of the item in the Southwest region.

Pronto, the reporter proceeded to a hotel close to the said warehouse with a view to ascertaining the arrival of the consignment of ponmo.


Behold, at exactly 1.45 am, the trailer that loaded the item was seen pulling up at the warehouse with some men engaged to offload the consignment into the warehouse at No. 9 College Road.

The reporter would later find that after the first story on ponmo was published penultimate Saturday, Mrs. Animashahun, a big distributor of the item, who was very boastful and hostile to the reporter during his first visit to the warehouse, had gone back to the community leaders with his lawyer, begging that she should be given the chance to sell her poisonous item until August ending when she would relocate her shop.

Seeing that her demand had met brick wall, she decided not to offload her consignment in the day time and chose to do so at the odd hours of the night when residents of the area must have slept.


When the consignment of ponmo arrived in the wee hours of the said day, it was accompanied by about seven casual labourers who offloaded it into the warehouse.

Animashahun’s plan was to wait till the morning of the following Monday to inform her numerous customers to come for their goods.

So after the offloading was completed around 3:00am on that Saturday, she simply retired home for a good rest.

Unfortunately for her, she had barely settled down when some officials of the Ministries of Health and Agriculture got a tip-off that another consignment of poisonous ponmo had arrived the community.


They immediately went into action, putting in place the necessary strategy to nab the major distributor of the poisonous substance.


The Nation gathered that the operation, which lasted for about 10 hours before all the consignment could be removed, was a joint effort of the State Task Force, Igando Police Command and the Ministries of Health and Agriculture officials, who forced all their professionals out into the field to confiscate the poisonous substance.

Shedding more light on the incident in a chat with our reporter, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Dr. Olayiwole Onasanya, said immediately he got the tip-off from a concerned member of the public, he alerted all the relevant government agencies to be on the alert and get ready to move to the location.

He said: “As soon as we received the tip-off, members of the task force, the police and all our officers went into action and we arrested about six people. The consignment of poisonous ponmo was also confiscated. We are going to do a lab investigation on it. This is to assure the public that our team is on top of the matter and we are doing all we could to apprehend all members of the syndicate of this poisonous ponmo.

”People should be aware that this poisonous ponmo is processed for leather, but some people converted it into food for consumption, which is criminal. When you want to process ponmo for leather, there are some chemicals you use. One of them is slake lime otherwise known as calcium hydroxide, which is an alkaline chemical that is also Castro genic.

“Apart from this, they also use formalin, which is used in preserving dead bodies. All these are Castro genic. People should be very careful. If they see any ponmo that is excessively big, black and hard, they should be very careful in consuming such.from the nationonline.net