Ondo 48 dead: The question of ‘official negligence’

Eleven years after methanol poisoning from illicit alcohol killed Nigerians in Irele and Odigbo, the same two Ondo LGAs are burying their dead again. After almost nine years under the same NAFDAC leadership, the question is no longer what the agency inherited. It is what changed.

Almost 50 Nigerians are dead. Five are totally blind. Two are partially blind. In a press release issued on September 18, NAFDAC reported 48 deaths and 182 cases following the consumption of locally prepared alcoholic and herbal concoctions in Odigbo, Ondo State, with the outbreak extending to neighbouring Irele. NAFDAC tested 15 samples of the suspected concoctions and found high concentrations of methanol, a highly toxic compound capable of causing blindness and death.

Further analyses are ongoing. Fifteen people have been arrested. Those who produced, distributed and sold poisonous drinks must answer for what they did. But accountability cannot end with them.

In April 2015, a methanol-poisoning outbreak produced 37 identified cases and 27 deaths in Irele and Odigbo. Locally brewed gin was implicated. Samples were tested and five contained high concentrations of methanol. Investigators called for enforcement against illicitly produced alcohol to prevent another outbreak. A month later, Rivers State suffered another devastating methanol-poisoning outbreak: 84 cases and approximately 70 deaths. Nigeria therefore cannot say it did not know the danger. We knew the poison. We knew what it could do. And in Ondo, we knew where it had happened. Eleven years later, Irele and Odigbo are burying people again. That makes this more than another enforcement story. It raises a fundamental regulatory question: What was done with the warning Nigeria received in 2015? Professor Mojisola Adeyeye became Director-General of NAFDAC on November 30, 2017. She has led the agency for almost nine years. In defending her record, Professor Adeyeye has pointed to the state in which she inherited NAFDAC, saying companies once had to provide vehicles for inspections and that “no single director had a laptop bought by NAFDAC,” while ICT had been “put in the deep freezer.” But after almost nine years in charge, laptops and vehicles cannot be the measure of whether NAFDAC has been fixed. The measure must be what Nigerians experience in the market: whether fake, substandard and dangerous products are being kept away from consumers. After almost nine years, the central question can no longer be what she inherited. It is what changed.

At a September 2026 media engagement, Professor Adeyeye was asked about calls for her resignation amid public concern over fake, adulterated and substandard products. She laughed before responding, which was highly inappropriate in the circumstances. This was not a trivial question. Nigerians were expressing concern about the safety of products they consume and bring into their homes.

Against that backdrop, laughter risked appearing dismissive of the seriousness of those concerns. And the reaction was immediate. Across social media, Nigerians began posting photographs and videos of products they said they had bought believing them to be genuine: food, beverages, toothpaste, yogurt and other everyday consumer goods. Some compared suspected counterfeits with originals. Others displayed questionable packaging or products they believed had been adulterated. The scale of the reaction exposed something a regulator cannot ignore: a serious crisis of public confidence.

Nigerians were effectively saying, ‘Look at what we are feeding our families.’

The problem extends far beyond social media complaints. NAFDAC itself has put the prevalence of fake and substandard medicines at around 13 to 15 per cent. In June 2026, the agency said cosmetics, food and beverages accounted for more than half of the counterfeit products it had confiscated. Two months later, the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare cited industry estimates that approximately 40 per cent of spirits and wines in Nigeria are illicit or unrecorded. This is not a marginal problem. It points to an illicit market operating at enormous scale.

Nigeria’s economic reality makes the problem more dangerous. For consumers under severe financial pressure, price matters. Cheaper products are attractive because they are affordable. At the same time, illicit producers can evade taxes, registration, testing, quality control, and compliance costs borne by legitimate manufacturers, allowing them to compete aggressively on price.

The pressure is evident in how ordinary Nigerians describe their purchasing decisions. “Things are very hard. People are looking at their pockets and buying what their money can afford,” one trader recently explained. Another consumer said his family now compares prices, visits different markets and buys smaller quantities because their income has not increased. A Lagos resident described the calculation simply: “Before I pick anything, I check the price and calculate what I can afford.”

But this is where economic hardship collides with weak regulation. When fake, adulterated and substandard products are easily accessible in the same markets where financially stretched Nigerians are searching for cheaper alternatives, the danger multiplies.

A consumer may suspect that something is unusually cheap, but when the choice is between buying what is affordable or going without, the attitude can quickly become “I have no option” .This is what I can afford.”

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That is the dangerous equation. Economic hardship pushes consumers towards cheaper alternatives, while inadequate enforcement allows unsafe products to meet them there. Nigerians with the least money to spare can therefore become the most exposed to fake and dangerous products.

Regulation cannot protect only consumers who can afford to buy at the safer end of the market. A Nigerian buying what he or she can afford is entitled to expect that it will not poison them. Beneath all of this remains one fundamental question: Can Nigerians trust the products they buy?

NAFDAC says that between May and July 2026 it removed 7,210 fake, substandard and other non-compliant products while visiting 6,233 facilities across Nigeria. The agency also says it has seized or destroyed fake and substandard products worth more than N1.5tn since 2023. Those are large numbers, but they are not automatically evidence of adequate regulation.

For a country of more than 200 million people and one of Africa’s largest consumer markets, the relevant question is whether the scale, depth, frequency and consistency of enforcement are sufficient for the market NAFDAC is responsible for regulating. Visiting facilities across every state demonstrates geographic reach. It does not, by itself, establish that enforcement is equally deep or effective across markets, regions and product categories.

And this matters economically. Every enforcement gap creates an advantage for the illicit operator and a disadvantage for the legitimate business. A compliant manufacturer or importer pays for registration, testing, quality control, approved facilities, employees, taxes, documentation and regulatory compliance. The illicit producer can avoid much of that burden. If enforcement is inadequate or uneven, the result is perverse: the company that obeys the rules carries the financial burden of regulation, while the operator that breaks them gains a cost advantage. Legitimate businesses lose sales. The government loses revenue. Brands lose consumer confidence. Investment and jobs are put at risk.

Fake and substandard products are therefore more than a public-health problem. They are an economic problem. This is why counting seizures is not enough. The real test is whether enforcement is broad, consistent and preventive enough to make non-compliance harder and more costly than compliance. After almost nine years under the same Director-General, that is a fair measure against which to examine NAFDAC’s performance.

On September 18, President Bola Tinubu said the government would not tolerate mass deaths arising from “official negligence”. He was addressing an entirely separate tragedy involving deaths in NSCDC custody in Niger State, not NAFDAC or Ondo. But the principle applies: where evidence establishes that official negligence contributed to deaths, there must be accountability.

Nobody should declare NAFDAC negligent without evidence. But when a known threat returns 11 years later and kills dozens of Nigerians in the same two LGAs, legitimate questions must be asked. And these were not eleven quiet years between two isolated tragedies: the threat of illicit, adulterated and dangerous products persisted throughout.

So, what happened after the 2015 warning? What surveillance and enforcement followed? What was known about illicit production in Irele and Odigbo? Could more reasonably have been done before people began dying again?

Then there is NAFDAC’s response. On September 18, NAFDAC described its response as “swift and comprehensive”. But Ondo State’s Commissioner for Health says the initial cluster of deaths was known by September 3. A press release issued after 48 people are dead cannot, by itself, establish that the response was “swift and comprehensive”. The public deserves the facts.

Eleven years should have been enough time to learn. Almost nine years under the same NAFDAC leadership should have been enough time to act. The illicit, fake and uncontrolled market remains rampant. Nigerians are still dying. The question now is, who must be held accountable?

Omisholuyi, a community watch analyst, writes from Okitipupa, Ondo State