Canada has added a warning about unregulated alcohol to its official travel advisory for Nigeria, following a methanol poisoning outbreak in Ondo State that has killed 48 people.
The update, added on September 21, tells Canadians in Nigeria to buy alcohol only from reputable establishments and to seek medical help if they start feeling unwell. It states that casualties have occurred from unregulated and adulterated alcohol containing high levels of methanol, but does not name a specific death toll.
Nigerian authorities have already put a number on it. NAFDAC said that as of September 17, 182 cases had been recorded and 48 deaths confirmed, concentrated in Odigbo Local Government Area, with more cases reported in Irele. Ninety people were admitted and later discharged, six remain hospitalised and 31 were treated as outpatients. Five people have gone totally blind and two partially blind, with other victims reporting headaches, breathing difficulty and altered consciousness.
Laboratory testing has narrowed in on the cause. NAFDAC collected 15 unlabelled samples of the suspected drinks for toxicology and chemical analysis. Gas chromatography found high methanol concentrations, and 11 of the 15 samples also tested positive for cannabis indica. Confirmatory testing to pin down exact methanol levels and any other toxic agents is still ongoing.
The agency has arrested 15 people over the suspected production, sale and distribution of the drinks, and is working with public health authorities on surveillance and case management in the affected communities. Investigators still need to trace how the products were made, where the ingredients came from and how they moved from producers to consumers before the source of the contamination can be confirmed.
Ondo State has since begun reviewing the rules governing locally prepared herbal and alcoholic products and has taken steps toward a coroner’s inquiry into the deaths. NAFDAC has also enforced a nationwide ban on alcohol sold in sachets and small plastic bottles.
For Nigeria’s formal beverage industry, the advisory matters because it moves a domestic safety problem onto an international stage. Its wording targets unregulated and adulterated alcohol specifically, not Nigerian drinks generally, but that distinction can be hard for an ordinary buyer to make. A locally prepared drink or repackaged bottle can look identical to a properly registered one, and counterfeit labels or reused containers only widen that gap.
NAFDAC runs a product registration database that lets consumers check whether a drink is properly licensed, and it has repeatedly urged buyers to purchase only from trusted outlets. That guidance now carries extra weight given how quickly methanol poisoning can escalate from what looks like ordinary intoxication to organ failure or blindness.
The Ondo outbreak, and the Canadian response to it, sits alongside a wider run of enforcement action against unregulated drinks production in Nigeria this year, from police raids on illegal factories to court convictions of counterfeiters. For the formal sector, each incident makes it harder for consumers to tell a regulated product from one that never passed through any checks at all.
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