What is your initial reaction to the recent ban placed by NAFDAC on alcoholic beverages in sachets and PET bottles?
Our initial reaction was a big surprise because we had been collaborating with NAFDAC to ensure the discouragement of underage abuse of alcohol and promote responsible drinking. In the past four years, we’ve spent over N1bn on advocacy campaigns across Nigeria using billboards, radio jingles in Nigerian languages (Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Pidgin), as well as other media, to discourage underage abuse. For us, we felt that we had done enough and we’ll continue to do more to ensure that we create a culture of responsible drinking and discourage underage abuse. Our collaboration with NAFDAC and other ministries, departments, and agencies of government is to ensure that we entrench the culture of responsible drinking and discourage underage abuse. So we were surprised when NAFDAC on February 1 pronounced the ban, which has never been a solution; the solution is access control and regulation.
What impact do you anticipate this ban will have on DIBAN members’ business operations and revenue streams?
We will have a very serious setback in our business because the sachet is about 80 per cent of our production outlay. It is not peculiar to alcoholic beverages and drinks alone. Most Nigerians can no longer afford to buy alcohol in bottles, and because of that, most of us are segmented into sachets. It is not peculiar to our industry; sugar, milk, and all other items are going towards sachets. So what we have done was to make it affordable for Nigerians. So for us, it’s going to cause a serious setback. About 3.5 million people will be affected; they will lose their jobs, with direct jobs of about 500,000 and indirect jobs of about five million. Our combined investment of about N1.2tn will go down the drain.
Our members’ investment in this business is about N500bn, while the indirect investment is about N800bn. If you combine both, you’ll look at about N1.3bn that will be affected. Most of this money was borrowed from banks – long and short-term facilities. If care is not taken, some banks may go under because most of the facilities were borrowed to ensure that we have long-term business plans as a growing concern.
So many workers have lost their jobs due to the ban. In our physical role, we have about 500 workers, but in the indirect value chain – those who produce cartons, those who produce laminates, those who produce labels, our distributors, some of our members have other supportive staff – we have about five million people, so if you add everything together, 5.5 million people are affected or will be affected by this ban.
Has DIBAN previously received any warnings or indications from the regulatory authorities regarding the packaging format of alcoholic beverages?
Yes, in 2018, during the tenure of Prof (Isaac) Adewole as the minister of health, we discussed a memorandum of understanding. We signed that MoU under duress because we had two options: either an outright ban or a five-year moratorium. But the then-minister had a caveat that if we did enough campaigns and sensitisation, the ban might not stay. So because of that, we had to encourage our members to put money down, about N1bn as of December last year had been spent on campaigns across the country.
So, our thinking was that with what we had done, we were creating awareness like other African countries. Before they sell alcohol to any person, they would request an identity card, age, and access control, and only those who have liquor licences, on and off liquor licences can sell alcohol. So if those controls are put in place, we are likely going to have access control and reduce any abuse of alcohol by the underage.
Can you clarify DIBAN’s stance on responsible alcohol consumption and measures taken to prevent underage access to the products of its members?
DIBAN’s stance has always been access control and regulation, and we have a ministerial committee on spirit drinks, which was set up by the immediate past Minister of Health, Dr (Osagie) Ehanire. DIBAN has been very active in that ministerial committee, and we all agreed at that committee level that a ban has never been a way to address alcohol consumption by the underage. The only way is access control, regulation, collaboration with government agencies, and also ensuring that on and off licence is put in place. If we have on and off licences, what that means is that the sale of alcohol will be restricted to only those who have a licence, and if that is done, it will cut across all the local governments in Nigeria, which will go a long way in reducing alcohol abuse by the underage.
The other issue is regulation. NAFDAC needs to up its game as it affects regulation. If the regulation is very strict, then we will have a better society to live in as it affects alcohol abuse and access control. It will also interest you to know that an independent study was conducted jointly by DIBAN and NAFDAC, and the report of that study showed that only about 3.8 per cent of youths abuse alcohol. Often, people misplay alcohol abuse with substance abuse. What most youths consume are substances like codeine and other related substances, not alcohol. That is why we asked the DG of NAFDAC, for most of those pronouncements that she made, we don’t have any empirical data or support for them.
The only study we conducted with NAFDAC showed that less than four per cent of youths in Nigeria abuse alcohol in sachets or PET bottles. So for us, that is good because our campaign has been massive and effective. Parents have started monitoring their children to make sure that they don’t get involved in alcohol because if you have parental care, and a parental monitoring system, you will not allow underage children to consume alcohol. Alcohol for underage is not proper, so for us, it is not the profit aspect of the business. As much as we want to make money, we also want to encourage responsible drinking.
How does DIBAN plan to address concerns raised by NAFDAC regarding the potential health and societal impacts of alcoholic beverages in sachets?
We’ve been collaborating with NAFDAC and we will continue to collaborate with the agency; we will continue to do our sensitisation; we will continue to do our education in terms of mass media, and school visitation through our distributors, and we have also started talking to our distributors not to sell alcohol to the underage.
Can you provide insights into the process by which your association ensures compliance with regulatory standards and guidelines for its products?
Most of our products are certified by NAFDAC; you must have a NAFDAC registration number before you start producing. So what this means is that all our 27 members’ products are certified by NAFDAC; the problem is that within the market space, we also have illicit producers; those that are not certified by NAFDAC are in the market, but NAFDAC has not been able to track those that are involved in the illicit production of the alcoholic beverages. So for us as a group, all our members’ products are certified by NAFDAC, and we have registration numbers for those products, so there is no way we will go into producing without being certified, because we embrace the culture of good manufacturing practices, and before your product is certified by NAFDAC, its officials would have visited your factory, and establish that your production processes are good and in line with international best practice.
How does DIBAN intend to communicate this ban to consumers and distributors, and what support will be provided to facilitate a smooth transition?
We still believe that there will be a reversal and we also believe that we will continue to work with NAFDAC and other regulatory agencies to ensure that we encourage responsible drinking and ensure that underage abuse of alcohol is reduced to the barest minimum.
Who should be blamed for the heavy consumption of alcohol by commercial drivers many of whom drive recklessly and destroy lives and property?
The issue is that if you check the Internet about the reckless consumption of alcohol by commercial drivers, most of them drink beer and not spirits. Of course, the Federal Road Safety Corps is working with us, and in the last ministerial committee meeting, they were there, and they’ve been mandated to ensure that they do stop-and-check on drivers and also to discourage the sale of alcohol at motor parks; that is not DIBAN’s responsibility; it is the regulatory agencies’ responsibility. On our own, we’ve been able to create awareness and encourage responsible drinking; it is not our responsibility to begin to raid motor parks or to find out which driver is drunk.
It is the responsibility of the FRSC and NAFDAC to raid motor parks and ensure that alcohol is not sold in motor parks, even not sold very close to schools too because there is a law that alcohol should not be sold about 500 meters away from school premises; they need to enforce those laws, but there is no enforcement of laws.
What steps has DIBAN taken or plans to take to mitigate any negative perception or reputational impact resulting from the ban?
That is why we are going into the conversation with the media; we’ve been running adverts in some prominent newspapers and media organisations, and we’ve had electronic interviews with our parent organisation. Our responsibility is to debunk some of those claims by NAFDAC; they are not correct, and there is no empirical evidence to back those claims, so we try as much as possible to use the media space to debunk all those allegations and put our position across to Nigerians.
How does DIBAN envision the future of the alcoholic beverage industry in Nigeria, particularly in light of increasing regulatory scrutiny and consumer awareness?
We are an association of companies that believe in good manufacturing practices, so what that means is that our products are of high quality; our products pass through regulatory monitoring because NAFDAC often visits our factory to confirm whether we have met all the regulatory requirements. So what that means is that we will continuously be producing the products – healthy products, and products that meet international standards – standards organisations have given us standards for alcohol and those standards are what we put in place when we produce; so we will work within that framework; we will also work with the NAFDAC framework to ensure that we bring out good products that meet international standards.
