How more can we continue to carry on with our insouciant attitude and legendary predilection for cutting corners in this nation? How more can the regulatory authorities remain tardy in their enforcement duties?
As at last Thursday, 48 people, including three siblings, have died, while 182 people are in various states of distress after consuming a suspected poisonous local herbal drink. The tragedy started in the Araromi-Obu and Odigbo communities in Ondo State. The health crisis has spread to Irele council where fresh cases and deaths are being recorded.
Victims were said to have drunk a local alcoholic herbal mixture, locally known as “Monkey tail.” Symptoms exhibited included vomiting, loss of consciousness and/or sight shortly after drinking the killer liquid.
Health experts suspect deadly contamination such as toxic methanol mixed into the alcohol. Police have arrested a suspected producer linked to the tainted batch of the “Monkey tail,” while the state government has banned the sale and consumption of uncertified local herbal drinks.
The Ondo State Police Command has also enjoined members of the public to exercise extreme caution and refrain from consuming locally produced, unlabelled or suspicious alcoholic drinks and herbal concoctions, particularly products whose contents, source or safety cannot be verified.
As the bereaved are burying their dead and those in critical conditions are in supplication to Providence to live to tell the grisly story, history is being replayed. About 11 years ago, precisely on April 13, 2015, three people from one of the communities affected by the latest tragedy, precisely Ode-Irele community in Irele LGA, Ondo State, were reported exhibiting symptoms of headache, blurring of vision, respiratory symptom and loss of consciousness, all resulting in death within 24 to 72 hours of onset.
The victims had consumed a contaminated local brew, called ‘Ogogoro.’ About 89 persons died altogether before the crisis was contained. The incident actually highlighted a fascinating but deadly clash between science and local beliefs. The traditional community in the Ondo town added a comical or farcical angle to what was seen as “mysterious deaths.”
Local chiefs and traditionalists in the community strongly argued that the deaths were a supernatural punishment. They believed that the rash of deaths resulted from the heinous action of a group of youths, who had committed sacrilege by breaking into the inner shrine of the 300-year-old Malokun deity to steal artifacts for money rituals.
A newspaper’s special investigation then vividly captured how the community resorted to ritual cleansing and tried to protect themselves against what they called the fury of the deity by festooning their doorposts with the traditional ‘Akoko’ leaves!
However, the formal toxicological investigations carried out by NAFDAC and the World Health Organization (WHO) ultimately proved that a toxic batch of the local brew was entirely to blame. How will the Ode-Irele traditional community react to the same tragedy hitting their town this time?
According to the comprehensive update provided by NAFDAC’s Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, on the Odigbo tragedy last Friday, as at of September 17, 2026 (Thursday), a heavy methanol contamination and a generous dose of cannabis were found in the samples of the local alcoholic concoctions that caused 48 deaths and 182 total cases in Odigbo and Irele Local Government Areas of Ondo State.
About 90 patients have been discharged; 31 were treated as outpatients. Five victims suffered total blindness and two partial blindness. Specifically, gas chromatography screening, the agency said, confirmed dangerously high concentrations of toxic methanol in the locally prepared alcoholic and herbal concoctions. Preliminary tests on 15 samples also tested positive for Cannabis indica in 11 instances.
Acute oral toxicity tests on mice showed roughly 50% mortality in six out of 15 analyzed samples, highlighting extreme toxicity. About 15 more individuals have also been arrested in connection with the production, sale and distribution of the tainted local beverages.
NAFDAC said it would continue confirmatory testing to quantify exact methanol levels and trace other potential toxic agents, warning the public strictly against consuming unregistered local herbal or alcoholic mixtures.
Adulteration of local alcoholic and herbal drinks is a macabre game shaped by a combination of ignorance, negligence, poverty, the deleterious activities and sleight of unscrupulous brew merchants.
Local brewers and unscrupulous producers add industrial methanol or extra ethanol to traditional herbal and alcoholic drinks primarily to cut production costs, increase profit margins and boost the strength of the beverage.
Ethanol is a natural and effective solvent required to draw out active medicinal compounds, resins, alkaloids and essential oils from roots, barks and leaves that water cannot dissolve. Ethanol also acts as a strong preservative, preventing herbal mixtures from spoiling or growing bacteria. It thus allows the drinks to be stored for long periods.
Rapacious brewers, however, add extra ethanol, which cheaply increases the overall alcohol volume and perceived strength of a weak batch. But an overdose of ethanol renders the whole thing toxic.
Some local brewing merchants also adulterate their batches by adding methanol, a deadly industrial chemical found in products like solvents and antifreeze, because it is cheaper. It costs only a fraction of legitimate food-grade ethanol.
In completely unregulated local markets where a shot of local gin or herbal mixture (‘ogogoro’ or ‘paraga’) is sold very cheaply, profit margins are extremely small. Methanol is added to naturally stretch the volume and create an artificial appearance of high potency without raising production costs.
Methanol is impelling because it is not only cheaper, it is more readily available from industrial sources and produces the same intoxicating effect, but it is more lethal. So, it contaminates the batches.
The economic incentive to adulterate is structural. It exists because the market for cheap alcohol in rural Nigeria is both enormous and completely unregulated. There is no licensing, no testing, no traceability and no supply chain accountability from the point of production to the point of consumption.
Putting paid to adulteration has been a tall order because, as has been observed, the demand market for cheap alcohol is massive. The consumption of local alcoholic and herbal drinks mostly in the rural areas and dingy street corners in city suburbs is a ghoulish obsession.
It has acquired a life of its own. So is the supply line. It is a cycle that has blended with the drudgery of grinding life in rural Nigeria and poverty-infested city suburbs.
For most youths in most of those places, alcoholic and herbal drinks have become more or less a pre-breakfast ‘appetizer.’ In motor parks, markets, local joints and makeshift kiosks all around, the sale and consumption of these drinks are a binge addiction.
Most of the social vices being perpetrated by vile characters in town and the raucous activities of iniquitous garage touts as well as reckless temperaments of drivers on the highways are caused by these alcoholic beverages and drugs.
Often scuzzy in appearance and high on these intoxicants that sufficiently coarse them, the touts are particularly inured to violence and intimidation in collecting daily illegal levies in motor parks.
Their nuisance is legendary. They cause needless gridlocks and pick up tangles in motor parks, on the roads as well as major bus stops because of their mercurial temperament and irascible nature, having been inebriated from time to time by heavy doses of alcoholic beverages and dangerous drugs.
The proliferation of adulterated alcoholic beverages is also an enforcement problem. The regulatory authorities like NAFDAC and others have been louder in verbal advocacy through press statements issued from cosy offices than field operations. And regulatory responses to emergencies of Odigbo’s nature have been at best cosmetic and ‘fire brigade.’
A ban that is hardly enforced will be placed on further consumption of the local brew within the area of tragedy. Laboratory analyses are carried out. Arrests are made. NAFDAC will issue a strong warning. Condolences are offered. Gradually, the issue peters out and the beat goes on till the next tragedy wakes everyone from lethargy. It is a vicious cycle.
It is instructive that despite the ban, the sale and consumption of herbal drinks are still thriving in some of the same communities affected by deaths from methanol-contaminated drinks.
One of the consumers, who was apparently unfazed by the whole brouhaha about adulterated herbal drinks, was quoted as claiming that the drink he was seen gulping down his throat with relish is a medicinal cure for back pains and other stomach issues. He said not all the herbal alcoholic concoctions are poisonous and was sure he was buying from the right source.
According to health experts, consuming high levels of methanol is extremely dangerous. Once swallowed, the body breaks methanol down into toxic formic acid, which causes severe metabolic acidosis, permanent blindness, organ failure and death.
It is high time NAFDAC stopped vacillating in enforcing the ban on some categories of alcoholic beverages and herbal drinks. The agency started the enforcement of the ban on alcohol sold in sachet or in less than 200ml PET bottles on February1, 2024.
The restrictions target easily concealed, high-alcohol-content products that pose severe health risks to minors and vulnerable groups, rather than an outright ban on alcohol itself.
That was after a five -year moratorium that the then Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Folorunsho Adewole, gave the manufacturers to phase out the two package types. This moratorium document was signed in December, 2018 by the Distillers and Blenders Association of Nigeria (DIBAN) and the Association of Food Beverage & Tobacco Employers (AFBTE) with the Federal Ministry of Health, NAFDAC and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC).
The outright enforcement of the ban suffered setbacks then following pressures from the manufacturers seeking for more time to effectively exhaust old stock and reconfigure their production lines.
But the coast has been clear since December, 2025 for NAFDAC to enforce the ban. The agency has already warned that there would no longer be further extension. And the Senate has offered the agency a strong legislative backing to carry out its statutory mandate.
In her last statement to the stakeholders over the ban, the NAFDAC boss, Prof. Adeyeye, observed, inter Alia: “The proliferation of high-alcohol-content beverages in sachets and small containers has made such products easily accessible, affordable and concealable, leading to widespread misuse and addiction among minors and commercial drivers. This public health menace has been linked to increased incidences of domestic violence, road accidents, school dropouts, and social vices across communities.”
She enjoined “all stakeholders, including manufacturers, distributors and retailers, to comply fully with the phase-out deadline, as no further extension will be entertained beyond December 2025.”
“This decisive action, ordered by the Nigerian Senate and backed by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, underscores the agency’s statutory mandate to safeguard public health and protect vulnerable populations—particularly children, adolescents, and young adults—from the harmful use of alcohol.
“NAFDAC remains resolute in its mission to ensure that only safe, wholesome and properly regulated products are available to Nigerians.”
It is almost nine months after the final phased-out notice had been served the producers and other stakeholders. Enough of prevarications.
Let the agency walk its talk, hit the field, rid the society of these killer alcoholic beverages and put paid to further avoidable fatalities, in line with the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol (WHA63.13, 2010), to which Nigeria is a signatory.