Long before herbal medicine became a daily subject on social media, WhatsApp and television programmes, one Nigerian woman was already taking the conversation to newspaper readers.
Her name was Elizabeth Kafaru.
In an era when information about herbs was largely passed from one person to another, Kafaru became one of the most recognisable Nigerian voices promoting natural health in the mainstream press. Through her writing, particularly her work with The Guardian, she helped bring conversations about herbs, indigenous knowledge and personal health into the homes of ordinary Nigerians.
But the story of Elizabeth Kafaru is bigger than herbal remedies.
It is also a story about a changing Nigeria, the growing public interest in alternative medicine, the power of newspapers and a woman who transformed an interest in traditional healing into a career that would outlive her.
The experience that changed her direction
Kafaru’s journey into herbal medicine is commonly traced to 1975, when she reportedly sought herbal treatment for a gynaecological problem.
The experience made a deep impression on her.
Rather than treating the encounter as an isolated episode, Kafaru became increasingly interested in herbal medicine and the use of plants for health. Over time, she developed her knowledge and became involved in the practice and promotion of natural medicine.
This was taking place at a time when traditional medicine remained an important part of Nigerian society.
Across the country, knowledge of medicinal plants had existed for generations. Leaves, roots, bark, seeds and other plant materials were used in different communities for a variety of ailments. Such knowledge was often transmitted orally, with practitioners learning from older members of their families or communities.
Kafaru’s eventual contribution would be to take some of that conversation beyond those traditional circles.
She would put it into print.
EXPLORE NOW: Military Era & Coups in Nigeria
The newspaper that gave her a national audience
The major turning point came through The Guardian, the Lagos based newspaper founded in 1983.
In the late 1980s, the newspaper began giving greater attention to natural health. Femi Kusa, who was editor of The Guardian from 1988 to 1992, later recalled the development of the newspaper’s Natural Health section and Kafaru’s involvement.
Kafaru became a regular contributor, writing about natural health and herbal remedies.
For readers at the time, this was significant.
A newspaper was not simply a place for political news, business reports and international affairs. It was also becoming a place where Nigerians could encounter discussions about health practices that had traditionally existed outside the formal medical establishment.
Kafaru’s writing gave herbal medicine a regular presence on the printed page.
Her column was particularly associated with The Guardian‘s Natural Health section, where she discussed herbs and their uses for a broad readership.
The relationship proved important for both Kafaru and the subject she represented.
She gained a much larger audience, while natural medicine gained a prominent platform in one of Nigeria’s influential newspapers.
When herbs became newspaper conversation
There was something unusual about the journey of the information.
Traditional medical knowledge had generally travelled through people.
A practitioner could teach an apprentice. A parent could pass knowledge to a child. An experienced healer could explain how a particular plant was prepared and used.
Kafaru’s newspaper column introduced another route.
A reader in Lagos could buy the newspaper and read about a plant. Someone in another part of Nigeria could encounter the same information days later. A subject that might previously have been discussed within a household or community could now become part of a national conversation.
That was the real power of the newspaper.
Kafaru was not the originator of Nigeria’s herbal medicine tradition. That tradition was centuries older than her.
Her distinction was that she became one of the people who popularised discussion of herbal medicine through modern mass media.
From newspaper columns to a book
The popularity of her work eventually led to a book.
In 1994, Kafaru published Immense Help from Nature’s Workshop through Elikaf Health Services Limited in Lagos.
The book focused on the use of herbs and presented natural health as part of an individual’s responsibility for maintaining good health.
Its publication marked an important stage in Kafaru’s career.
Her ideas were no longer confined to weekly newspaper columns. They had been gathered into a permanent publication that readers could keep and consult.
The book also ensured that her name entered the written record of Nigeria’s developing natural health movement.
Years later, her work would continue to be referenced in discussions of medicinal plants and indigenous health knowledge.
Elizabeth Kafaru and the rise of natural health in Nigeria
Kafaru’s prominence came at an interesting moment in Nigerian history.
Traditional medicine had never disappeared, even as hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical medicines became increasingly important.
For many Nigerians, healthcare was not necessarily an either or choice.
Someone could visit a hospital for one condition and still rely on traditional knowledge for another. Families could purchase pharmaceutical drugs while retaining knowledge about plants used by previous generations.
This mixture of old and new was particularly visible in the growing public interest in natural health.
Kafaru became one of the people associated with that movement.
Her work helped present herbal medicine not merely as something practised privately in villages, but as a subject that could be discussed openly by an urban newspaper audience.
That shift mattered.
It gave traditional health knowledge greater visibility and helped create conversations about how indigenous practices could coexist with modern healthcare.
A woman who became a familiar name
As Kafaru’s reputation grew, she became known beyond her newspaper column.
She was associated with herbal medicine, natural health and alternative healthcare, and later accounts gave her colourful descriptions such as the “Herbology Queen” and “Queen of Alternative Medicine.”
Such descriptions reflected the public image she had developed, although they should be understood as later labels rather than formal titles.
Her influence was particularly notable because she had achieved national recognition in a field dominated historically by informal practitioners and community based knowledge.
She had managed to turn an area of knowledge that was often transmitted privately into something that could be discussed publicly.
Her television presence
Kafaru’s influence was not limited to newspapers.
Accounts of her career also associate her with television programming on natural health during the 1990s.
This expanded her reach beyond newspaper readers.
The combination of print and television meant that her message could reach Nigerians who might not have encountered her work in The Guardian.
At a time when Nigeria had far fewer media platforms than it does today, becoming a recognisable voice across more than one medium was significant.
Kafaru was effectively participating in an early form of health communication aimed at the general public.
The questions surrounding traditional medicine
The popularity of herbal medicine also brought difficult questions.
Traditional knowledge could contain valuable observations about plants and their effects. Modern pharmaceutical research has itself drawn upon compounds originally identified in plants.
But the existence of a traditional remedy did not automatically establish that it was safe or effective for every condition.
This distinction was important in Kafaru’s era and remains important today.
The challenge facing Nigeria was not simply whether traditional medicine should exist. It was how indigenous knowledge could be preserved, investigated, developed and properly regulated.
Kafaru’s public career formed part of that larger historical conversation.
She helped make the subject visible.
The scientific and regulatory questions surrounding it would continue long after her.
The final chapter of her life
Elizabeth Kafaru died in 2001, aged 57.
Her death brought an end to the life of a woman who had spent decades associated with herbal medicine and natural health.
Reports and later accounts differ over the exact illness that caused her death. Some accounts have identified stroke, while others have mentioned cancer.
What remains important historically is that she died after establishing a lasting public identity in Nigerian natural health.
By then, her name had become closely connected with the newspaper era of herbal medicine promotion.
She had also left behind a published work that continued to circulate beyond her lifetime.
Why Elizabeth Kafaru is still remembered
Kafaru’s story is easy to reduce to one sentence: she was a Nigerian herbal practitioner.
That description misses the most interesting part.
Her significance was also in communication.
She lived at a time when indigenous knowledge was increasingly being challenged to prove its place in a society becoming more dependent on hospitals, pharmaceutical drugs and scientific medicine.
Instead of keeping her knowledge within a private circle, Kafaru took it to a national newspaper.
She wrote.
She published.
She appeared in the media.
And she helped make herbal medicine part of a wider public conversation.
That is why her story belongs not only to the history of traditional medicine, but also to the history of Nigerian journalism and women’s participation in public life.
The legacy she left behind
Today, Nigerians encounter herbal health claims almost everywhere.
They appear on television, radio, websites, Facebook pages, WhatsApp broadcasts and short videos. Sellers advertise herbal preparations directly to consumers, while researchers continue investigating medicinal plants found across Nigeria.
Kafaru worked in a very different media environment.
There was no social media to instantly distribute an idea to millions of people.
There were newspapers.
There were books.
There was television.
And within that world, Elizabeth Kafaru found a way to make her voice heard.
Her story is therefore not simply about what herbs can or cannot do.
It is about how one Nigerian woman helped move traditional health knowledge from private conversations into the public arena.
More than two decades after her death, the conversation she helped popularise continues.
The platforms have changed.
The questions have changed.
But the debate over how Nigeria should preserve its indigenous knowledge while advancing modern healthcare remains very much alive.
EXPLORE NOW: Biographies & Cultural Icons of Nigeria
Author’s Note
Elizabeth Kafaru’s lasting significance lies in how she brought Nigeria’s traditional herbal knowledge into mainstream public conversation through newspapers, books and television, becoming one of the country’s notable early voices in natural health communication.
References
Kafaru, Elizabeth. Immense Help from Nature’s Workshop: Guidelines on How to Use Herbs to Achieve a Healthy Living, as Health is an Individual Responsibility. Elikaf Health Services Limited, Lagos, 1994.
Kusa, Femi. Retrospective writings on The Guardian, Natural Health and Elizabeth Kafaru.
The NEWS. “Nigeria at 60: Top 10 Scientists.” 2020.
Archivi.ng. “Elizabeth Kafaru Turned Personal Pain into Public Healing.”
Biographical Legacy and Research Foundation. Biography of Femi Kusa.
AllAfrica archive. Contemporary report on the death of Elizabeth Kafaru, 2001.
