With the advancement in technology, which normally should come to alleviate humanity of their various herculean problems to make living on earth much easier and enjoyable, the opposite is now the case in certain situations.

Selfishly greedy and corrupt individuals are manipulating technology to suit their quest for riches or to realise their hidden criminal agenda of wanting to exterminate certain race of people from the surface of the earth.

I have come to receive various WhatsApp videos some of which alarm me so much so that they send cold chill down my spine. These alarmist videos are about how fake drugs and foods are finding their way into the African food chain or market.

As it is said, "seeing is believing", the practical demonstrations of the fake nature of the drugs and foods as seen in the videos cannot be disputed by any discerning Ghanaian or African. What you will be witnessing are not the cases of white or black magic tricks being played on your mind to deceive you but the absolute real case situations.

In one such video on a fake drug, one could see the demonstrator remove a tablet of paracetamol from its casing. She held it out for all to see it clearly well. Everyone could confirm that yes; she is holding a paracetamol pill/tablet. She announced it is plastic and started to unwrap it.

Yes, in the end, all could see that it was not paracetamol tablet as adjudged by its outward looks or features but indeed, a threadlike plastic wound around itself several times into that perfect shape of paracetamol pill as we initially saw, same as sold to the unsuspecting African public or the general public to take in the hope of curing their sicknesses.

Have we not also heard about plastic rice although I am yet to see a video of it myself? What about the Chinese allegedly preparing their dead into corned beef and selling them to Africans in general and Ghanaians in particular? I have seen a WhatsApp video where some Chinese butchers were removing the flesh from dead Chinese bodies and packing same into some boxes.

Finally, I have seen a WhatsApp video that has also appeared on YouTube on a Nigerian (by voice recognition) bought some “fish” from an African corner shop in London which fish turned out to be plastic, sponge or foam; call it whatever name you want but not fish. By the outward looks, you are purchasing some fish; however, it was completely a sponge/foam/plastic.

I wish the publishers could do us a great service by reproducing the video but not simply a picture for the public to ascertain the veracity of the claim that certain greedy bastards who do not care about the health of people but only about the satisfaction of their insatiable quest for riches, are manipulating technology to attain their evil desires at the expense of the health or life of people.

The Nigerian in this particular case has missed a great opportunity by not having the source(s) of the fake fish nabbed if he had reported it to the British police after posting it on WhatsApp. As it occurred in London, the police would have informed the Food Standard Agency to dispatch Food Hygiene Inspectors to the premises where it was purchased to gather more information about how the shopkeeper came by the plastic fish. With that information, they could keep on tracing until they got to those masterminds behind that deadly trade.

Could these fake and contaminated foods not be the cause of the many deaths, some hard to explain, that are occurring on daily basis among Ghanaians?

How best can we protect ourselves against these slow but deadly food and drug poisons that come to kill us slowly but surely? Can our Ghana Food and Drugs Board operatives be honestly on top of the issue?

Will corruption not blind them to do something silly even if they had the technological means to help the population not to become victims to the fake drugs and foods?