Poison On Our Shelves: Why Nigeria Must Institute The Death Penalty For Manufacturers And Sellers Of Fake Consumables -By Abdulfatah Adam

Nigeria is at war. Not with guns, but with poison on our shelves. The bottles of water, drugs, milk, juice, palm oil, rice and even baby food we buy daily are no longer safe. What should nourish us is now killing us slowly, and sometimes instantly. This is no longer a case of sharp business practice. It is mass murder for profit.

The numbers are terrifying and should jolt any serious government into action. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, up to 500,000 people die annually in Sub-Saharan Africa from counterfeit drugs. Of this figure, 267,000 deaths are from fake anti-malaria drugs and about 169,000 children die from fake antibiotics used to treat pneumonia. The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 10 medical products in low and middle-income countries, including Nigeria, is substandard or falsified, with West Africa being the worst hit. In Nigeria, the Association of Community Pharmacists warns that over fifty percent of medicines in circulation may be fake, far higher than the official estimate by NAFDAC of 13-15%. The economic cost is also crushing, with the World Health Organization showing that countries spend over $30.5 billion annually treating the effects of fake medical products, while Nigeria spends tens of millions of dollars yearly just treating people who consumed fake Consumables.

This is not just statistics. Walk into any Hospital, today and you will see wards filled with young Nigerians battling kidney failure, liver failure, heart problems, low sperm count and infertility. Medical experts have directly linked this explosion of organ failure to consumption of counterfeit products laced with dangerous industrial chemicals. It is a big threat to Nigerians and their health, and it is visible in our hospitals.

To be fair to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, they are not sleeping. The agency has carried out massive nationwide operations. Between February and March 2025 alone, NAFDAC seized and destroyed over one hundred and thirty seven truckloads of fake products valued at over one point five trillion naira in Lagos, Onitsha and Aba. In February 2026, they seized over 10million doses of fake malaria injections hidden in warehouses at Trade Fair Lagos valued at three billion naira. Between May and July 2026, they visited over six thousand facilities nationwide and removed thousands of fake products. But what is the punishment for such heinous crime? NAFDAC itself reported that it secured sixty four convictions in one year, with sentences ranging from twelve months to seven years imprisonment. A man who produced fake antibiotics that could kill thousands got seven years. Another who faked anti-malaria drugs got five years. After five years, he will come out and continue the same trade. This is why the trade is flourishing. The profit is in billions, the risk is a few years in jail. It is a bad business calculation that encourages murder.

We must call it what it is. These people are terrorists. A terrorist uses a bomb to kill twenty people and we sentence him to death. A fake drug manufacturer uses fake cerebral malaria injections that can kill millions of Nigerians and we give him five years. Where is the justice? It is premeditated murder. The manufacturer knows that putting chalk, starch, or contaminated water in a drug or food will kill. He does it anyway for profit. The current law has clearly failed. As the Director General of NAFDAC herself has advocated, we need to upgrade the law to provide for life imprisonment and death penalty for fake product dealers. Fines and short prison terms are a slap on the wrist. Global precedent exists. Countries like China, which had a similar crisis, instituted death penalty for manufacturers of fake foods and drugs, and the market was sanitized within years.

The Federal Government must therefore act as a matter of national emergency. The National Assembly must amend the NAFDAC Act and the Counterfeit and Fake Drugs Act to make manufacturing, importation and large-scale distribution of fake consumable products a capital offence punishable by death. We need to create special fast-track courts for fake product cases, just like we have for economic sabotage. We must empower NAFDAC and the Standards Organization of Nigeria with armed enforcement and forensic laboratories at all major ports and major markets across the country. We must also make communities whistleblowers by rewarding Nigerians who expose fake factories in their midst.

Nigeria cannot achieve food security and health for all while we allow merchants of death to refill water bottles with dirty water, to sell poison as baby food, and to sell chalk as medicine. If we do not kill this crime, this crime will kill Nigeria. The National Assembly must act now.

Abdulfatah Adam Writes from Suleja