Kaduna residents scramble for ‘toxic’ frozen fish dumped in cemetery

By NOAH EBIJE, Kaduna

Some Kaduna residents had penultimate Friday stumbled upon cartons of suspected toxic frozen fish dumped at a cemetery in Kaduna suburb by two truck-load.

Some eyewitnesses said passers-by scrambled and moved some of the cartons containing the fish from a refuse dump beside the cemetery for domestic use as well as for commercial purposes.

The fish were believed to have been discharged into the refuse dump beside the cemetery penultimate late Thursday night, and by Friday morning, some residents stumbled on them.

As at the time our correspondent visited the dumpsite Wednesday afternoon along cemetery Road, Narayi, pigs were seen feasting on the remnants of the fish, just as a bereaved family was seen carrying fresh burial rites at the cemetery.

Narayi cemetery is located just a stone throw to a police outpost, on the way to Yakowa Way, Chikun local government area of Kaduna State.

According to Daily Sun Investigation, a fish mogul believed to be selling fish in cartons in a large cold room in the Sabo Tasha area of Kaduna city decided to dump the fish after they had allegedly gone rotten following a power system failure in the cold room.

A middle-aged man told Daily Sun, “I even helped one of the women to pack the fish in a sack thinking that she was coming from a market and the carton got torn off, but I later discovered that she packed the fish from the refuse dump by the cemetery.”

An eyewitness who gave his name as Jerome said the drivers of the two trucks did not dump all the cartons as they went away with some quantities to an unknown destination.

Another eyewitness said, “My house is facing the cemetery and before we know it there was offensive odour everywhere, then we started hearing that rotten fish were dumped by the cemetery and some women have packed as many as they could pack a day earlier”.

A concerned resident, Josiah Otache, had earlier raised the alarm, saying: “I want to draw our attention to the two trucks of fish that were dumped at the cemetery waste side here in Narayi on Friday night.

“It is amazing that some residents went to the waste side and get those said fishes to their homes for consumption and some even selling them.

“The problem here is that nobody has any idea where this fish is coming from. Nobody knows the drivers nor the truck plate numbers that brought these things.

“Why will they bring this fish to Narayi and dump it. Why will they bring it in the late hours of the day?

“What if these fishes are poison and the target is about us here in Narayi?

“In my humble opinion, I think we should avoid roasted fish and frozen fish for now not just in Narayi because I overheard my neighbours calling their friends outside Narayi for the freezer to store the fish and for buyers as well.

“If we must buy fish, let us be very sure of the source. We need to create more awareness about this and help to run some inquiries about it as well.” (Daily Sun)