FEATURES - I've not seen Cocaine Before, I don't carry Drugs - Yem Kem

 Akintunde Ayeni, National President of the Herbal Society of Nigeria, and Chairman of Yem Kem International, debunks the rumour about being apprehended for drug-related issues in this interview:

Why did you abandon Fishery Science to become a herbal doctor?

I was born into a family of traditional medicine practitioners. My father was a powerful traditional doctor. My grandfather was a herbalist and a hunter. I was less than five years old when I got to know about traditional medicine. It was ordained that I would be a traditional doctor. I was always with my father each time he was preparing medicine for his patients and even when he was sourcing for the raw materials. As a child wanted I to become a herbal doctor. I had a passion for it. When my father was alive, people would come to greet him and give him gifts. They would thank him for healing them. It inspired me a lot. I felt it was really something I would love to do.

So why did you go into Fisheries as choice of study when you knew early that you would get into herbal medicine?

When I was young, I couldn’t eat fish. Each time I ate it, I would vomit. When I was in secondary school, I didn’t even outgrow it. My mother would put fish in my meal and I would still try to eat it but I would vomit. I just had to study it when I was going to school to find out why I had to be vomiting each time I ate it. I eventually got to know I was just allergic to it.

Is it true or a mere fable that you were born with herbs and cowries in your hands?

That was what was said when I was born. People said a lot of things about me. These are things you cannot explain unless your mother or those who were there during your birth would tell you the truth.

And did your mother tell you that you were born with cowries in your hands?

My mother said something like that. But my father told me that when I was three years old, it was revealed to them that I would be great. This practice has been in the family for over 500 years. I was told that my forefathers said that even if it was just one person that remained in the Ayeni family, that person would be a herbal doctor. With my exposure and education, I was able to transform herbal medicine to what it is today. I am glad people embrace herbal medicine now. We have one of the potent herbal medicines in Nigeria but our problem has been packaging. We have to give kudos to NAFDAC especially during the period of the late Prof. Dora Akunyili. She made sure herbal medicine was standardised so that products could be accepted in the international market.

But so many people were wary of your capsule when you just introduced it…

Oh yes. They thought it was not possible to turn herbs to capsule. Some people felt I had put some chemicals inside it. But people came to the factory and found out that we didn’t use any chemical. Now, you even have herbal products in the chemist and it wasn’t like that before. I don’t see any sickness that cannot be treated with the use of herbs.

When was the last time you took orthodox drugs?

I don’t normally take such drugs. That is why I don’t take injections. I believe in herbs, I believe in nature. I am not condemning the western drugs. If somebody had an accident, the first place you ought to take the person is the hospital. If a woman brings a scan of the fibroid she has, if it is very big, we tell her to go to the hospital and seek medical advice in terms of operation. But we have the herbal medicine that can stop the growth of the fibroid.

In Nigeria, once you say you are a herbalist, the first thought that would come to most people’s mind is that you are also a ‘babalawo’ or a native doctor, don’t you agree?

You are right. But that is the colonial mentality of our people. People believe incantations are applied to all herbal medicine. But that is not true. If you go to Germany, they have a lot of herbalists. Are you now saying they are spiritualists? No! When our colonial masters were ruling us, they destroyed so many things. They destroyed our native medicine first. They made people think that once you are black, then you are devilish. If a British living in Nigeria says he is a herbalist, you would see that so many people would rush to go and see him and patronise him because he is a white man. A herbalist is somebody that specialises in the use of herbal drugs. It has nothing to do with spiritualism. There is a difference between a spiritual doctor and a herbal doctor. But the colonial mentality has made our people see it in a different way. The Chinese would prepare herbal medicine and bring it down to Nigeria and people would rush it. We just don’t appreciate what we have. It is just that our forefathers who practised herbal medicine weren’t trained. They didn’t have any support from the government to develop their medicine and that has made a lot of people to die with their knowledge. There is a line of demarcation between herbal medicine and spiritualism.

So in your own case, are you just a herbal doctor or are you also into divination?

No. There is no way you can add all kinds of stuff in the course of herbal medicine. This is a product that passes several stages in the factory. If I am going to produce a formula that would pass through several stages, would I now start doing incantations into the machine that would produce the drugs? What kind of incantation do you want to impart on a medicine that thousands of people would use? Most people who buy my products don’t know me and they have not seen me before even though I have branches everywhere.

But we hear that you used to charge as high as N300,000 for consultation fee years ago…

That is not true. I have a lot of consultants that I have trained and they consult when I am not around. When I was consulting, my consultation fee was N5,000. I am always in the factory because I monitor and supervise the production. They cannot produce any drug in my absence because I want to make sure we have the best. I don’t discriminate, I see everybody who comes to me.

But we learnt that since the emergence of other alternative herbal medicine, Yem Kem has not been doing well.

Once somebody starts something good in Nigeria, people would copy and bastardise it. Yem Kem was the first to produce herbal drink, Osomo, in Nigeria. We don’t have control mechanism in Nigeria. How can multinational companies that specialise in beer production now suddenly go into the production of herbal drink? What do they know about herbs? There are so many other products in the market and they are killing people today. You need to go to where they are producing these drinks, it is a write off. Ninety days after we started producing Osomo drink, the product was faked. We had to stop production, we rebranded and changed the bottles and packaging. Those who faked the product were arrested. From 2013 till now, we are still in court.

Have you been able to fix your factory that got burnt?

Yes. Osomo came into the market in 2012 and it was faked in January 2013. We had to stop the production and we changed everything about it to knock out the fake. We came back to the market around April and the product was doing well. But six months later, the factory was razed. Nobody could explain, even till today, how the fire outbreak started. All the 16 water channel pumps in the factory were blocked. All the fire points were blocked. But when the building was razed, the water started flowing.

Are you implying the incident was as a result of sabotage?

I am not saying anything. But we thank God no life was lost. That could have made it terrible. We are still doing well.

But that is not the impression we got. We heard your company is no longer doing well and you even had to relocate to the village because you became broke…

You have seen my company; does it look like something that has folded up? This is the story from the enemies. By next year, I will be 35 years in this business and I know I have done well. Whatever the enemy can say, let them continue. There is nothing that can make me run away, it is impossible. Even if I relocate, is it not my personal house? I have houses in Lagos and my village. There are some people who are just enemies of progress.

But it was said you were arrested for drug related offences recently?

That is a big lie. That is the thinking and the voice of the enemies. When people don’t know how you are operating, they say all sorts of nonsensical things. They have been saying this for the past 20 years. People believe no Nigerian herbal doctor could do what I have been able to do. When this head office was inaugurated by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, people said a lot of things. They wondered how I was able to build such an office from the proceeds of herbal medicine. They said it was impossible and said I was selling cocaine. They forgot I had 48 branches in Nigeria then. Thirty of those branches would remit N100, 000 to me daily. So if you calculate that, I was getting more than N1m every day. So why wouldn’t I have been able to build such a complex when I wasn’t spending my money in club or using it to buy beer. I wasn’t using my money to spray musicians at parties. The money I realised from my business was what I used to establish myself. I built my first house in 1996. People came for the opening and they were amazed. I used marble to furnish the house. So when people saw the house, they were astonished. They concluded I was a ‘juju’ man. In 2007 when I built Pathfinder Hotel, people sent my name to NDLEA and other agencies, telling them I must be into shady and drug-related deals. They claimed that herbal medicine couldn’t have been my only source of wealth. They forgot the kind of products I have and the kind of patronage I was getting from the public. One of the most lucrative businesses is medicine. God has created me the way he did. People who have used my medicine are praying for me. It is not by my making, it is just God Almighty that used me. They have not seen anything, they will still talk some more because I am going to do things bigger than what I have already achieved. A South African herbal doctor has a private jet. I wonder what people would have said if I had one. Let them go to China and see herbal practitioners who are making billions of money. When you are doing business and you are doing well, just expect people to say crazy things about you. I have not seen cocaine before; I don’t know how it looks like.

Are you saying this is just a rumour?

It is a baseless, nonsensical rumour that has no value. How come it wasn’t publicised that I was in detention?

Because it was alleged you had paid some people in the media to ‘kill’ the story and even paid NDLEA not to publicise your detention…

This is just crazy. It is not even possible. So did I bribe PUNCH? Did I give your directors money not to publish the story? At least I know your newspaper would have carried the story if it was true. My name has gone so far, there is nothing I can do that can be hidden. My name is so popular that I am sure such story wouldn’t have been hidden from the media.

But if you paid people to ‘kill’ the story, don’t you think it wouldn’t be heard?

That is baseless! Can you believe such story that I would bribe NDLEA? This is just the work of the enemy. I have so many enemies since Osomo came into the market and started doing well. The truth is that it doesn’t bother me. Let them just establish a believable proof. Is it possible for any Nigerian man caught with drugs to be able to bribe the police in the UK or US?

Why did you stop your TV programme?

Even in multinational companies, there would be a time they would rely on massive advertisement and at other times, they would just stop. How many years ago did I stop presenting on TV? Some people still want my company to be the way it was five years ago. Do you still want me to be on TV scouting for clients? For what?

Did you have an issue with your fellow TV presenter, Segun Adisa?

Labe Orun was a TV programme we did for 15 years. If somebody served you for 15 years and decides to go and establish his own, wouldn’t you let go? That was what happened in our case. He said he wanted to take the programme to another station and we agreed. We didn’t want any problem. That was just the end. It was a programme that I had sponsored for 15 years. I didn’t stop him from airing the programme, we didn’t write any letter to the station he is presenting now.

 

Source: Nonye Ben-Nwankwo in the Punch