Criminals have declared war on Nigerians. It is time to declare war on them.
The counterfeiters and the vandals are not retreating. They are spreading through our cities, into our markets, and they are doing it without fear of the consequences of their actions. They have good reason for that lack of fear. Nothing in our laws has ever given them one.
We cannot go on like this. Our hospitals are filling up with organ failure cases, and the projections say it will get worse. This is a time bomb, and it is already ticking. The men who set it are smiling to the bank, afraid of nothing, because nothing in our laws has given them a reason to be afraid.
The Director-General of NAFDAC, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, recently revealed that traditional palm oil is being adulterated with azo dyes and other hazardous contaminants, and fufu is being produced with bleach and other chemicals injurious to health. Then she said the thing that should have dissolved whatever confidence remains in the regulatory system. NAFDAC does not have direct and absolute oversight over these products.
In other words, the oil in the market is beyond the reach of the agency. The fufu in the market is beyond the reach of the agency. The staples that feed this country are, in regulatory terms, unwatched.
Our reporters found the same story in four states. In Lagos, Onitsha, Abeokuta and Kano, palm oil and pepper are being coloured with Sudan III, Sudan IV, Rhodamine B and Metanil Yellow, dyes manufactured for textiles and never intended for human consumption. A trader in Lagos explained the difference between real and fake palm oil with a directness that has stayed with us. The genuine article, he said, is not too red. The fake looks like blood.
Medical experts have linked these dyes to liver and kidney damage, to genetic damage that raises cancer risk, and to acute harm in children. The same pattern runs through the market: calcium carbide to ripen fruit, pesticides on beans, formalin on fish and meat.
Recently, former vice president Yemi Osibanjo shared a story about his wife. How she was affected by fruits ripen through the same unhealthy practices by Nigerians.
This is not a problem of the open market alone. In Abuja, the counterfeiters have moved into the supermarkets. NAFDAC’s enforcement records show seizures of fake and unwholesome beverages from retail outlets in the Federal Capital Territory, alongside expired and relabelled products sitting openly on shelves in air-conditioned stores where shoppers pay a premium for the assurance of safety. The same syndicates that relabel expired whisky in a Lagos warehouse are pushing counterfeit drinks and consumables into the capital’s supermarkets, because that is where the money is, and because the law does not make them afraid.
The pharmacies are no better. In August, Lagos police intercepted a counterfeit drug network that had run for over two years. Three hundred cartons of fake Omeprazole. Bags of unpackaged Viagra. Ampiclox, Septrin, Piriton. The drugs were moving across Nigeria and into Lomé, Togo. Someone tried to bribe the police to release the suspects. NAFDAC’s Director of Investigation and Enforcement, Dr Martins Iluyomade, looked at the haul and said it was worse than terrorism, because counterfeit medicine can kill millions quietly, and victims even pay their own money to buy them.
And what does the law say about this? The former President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Olumide Akintayo, has put it plainly. The penalties are very ridiculous. A counterfeiter pays half a million naira and goes back to work. If the penalties are feeble, he said, then you are incentivising people to commit that crime.
Half a million naira. For a trade that kills. We have built a system that prices human life at a level any criminal can afford.
The enforcement figures show an agency doing everything it can with almost nothing. Between January and August 2026, NAFDAC ran 5,542 enforcement activities, conducted 213 raids, made 52 arrests, and destroyed unsafe products worth about N22.73 billion. In one week in October it seized and destroyed more than N5.3 billion worth of counterfeit goods: N2 billion in fake alcoholic drinks at the Lagos Trade Fair, N700 million in fake drinks and packaging in Aba, N2.6 billion destroyed in Port Harcourt. Between May and July it pulled 7,210 fake and substandard products off the shelves and secured 64 convictions.
Now look at the size of the agency doing this work. NAFDAC has roughly 2,000 staff for a country of more than 240 million people. Indonesia, with a similar population, has about 20,000 regulatory staff. Our agency is not failing. It is being asked to hold back an ocean with a bucket.
But here is the question. What happens after the seizure? What happens after the destruction? What happens after the press conference, the photographs of burning products, the triumphant press release?
We seize the fake drugs. We destroy the fake drinks. We arrest the suspects. And then we watch them walk back into the same market, sometimes within days, because the law permits it. The penalty for poisoning a nation is a fine that a successful counterfeiter can pay from one week’s profit.
Meanwhile, the victims are in hospital beds. A child whose kidneys are failing because the antimalarial he took was chalk. A father on dialysis because the palm oil his family cooked with for years was laced with industrial dye. A mother grieving a baby who died of a fever that a real drug would have cured. Some of these victims are still fighting for their lives. Others are already in the ground.
This is the cycle our laws have built: punishment for the product, impunity for the producer. We treat the fake goods as the crime and the people who make them as unfortunate businessmen who made a poor business decision. We burn the evidence and let the arsonist go.
A law that only reacts after the damage is done is not a law. It is a receipt, that only records the loss. It does not prevent it.
These people are not traders. They are not businessmen. They are not even, in any meaningful sense, criminals of the ordinary kind. They are murderers. They plan their killings in warehouses and backrooms. They calculate the cost of a fine against the profit from a thousand deaths. They know the drug will not work, that the oil will poison, that the drink will harm, and they sell it anyway. The law must call them what they are and treat them as such.
The purpose of law is to prevent. It is to stand between the citizen and the harm that would be done to him. It is to make the killer calculate, before he acts, whether the price is worth it. Our current law does not do this. It waits for the bodies to pile up, then seizes the products, destroys them, and releases the men who made them.
That is why this newspaper calls on the National Assembly to make laws declaring counterfeiting and infrastructure vandalism capital offences, punishable by execution.
We are specific about what this means. The production, distribution and sale of counterfeit drugs, drinks and consumable products must become a capital crime. The people who make fake medicine know what they are doing. They know a fake antimalarial will not save a child with malaria. They know dye in palm oil settles in the liver and kidneys of the family who cook with it every day. They know relabelled expired drinks can put a man in hospital. They do it for money. This is not carelessness. It is killing, planned and paid for.
The vandalism of critical public infrastructure must carry the same penalty. A man who cuts down a transmission tower is not a thief stealing scrap. He is attacking the system that keeps hospitals running and businesses alive. In a country where power is scarce, that is sabotage against every Nigerian who depends on it.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria reported that four towers, T50 to T53, on the Afam-IPP-Elelenwo 132kV line had their bracing members removed and carted away. It was the fifth attack on that same line. TCN’s Executive Director for Transmission Service Provider, Engr. Oluwagbenga Ajiboye, explained why. Vandals are charged with theft, a bailable offence, and released the next day. There are no laid-down consequences specified for vandalism of transmission towers and lines, he said. That is why the act continues.
That sentence deserves to be read twice. There are no consequences. A man can bring down a tower, sell the metal, pay a small price, and return to the same line. In the meantime, a hospital loses power. A business closes. A student studies by candlelight. The law looks at this and sees theft. It does not see the damage done to everyone who depended on that tower.
We know this will be resisted. Human rights groups will point to our courts and the risk of executing an innocent person. Those fears are not imaginary. This country has seen verdicts that shame the bench. Any new law must come with strict evidence standards, proper legal representation and a transparent process. The Nigerian Bar Association and civil society have a role in making sure the death penalty is not used to cover up lazy investigations or settle political scores. We accept that.
But we will not accept this as a reason to do nothing. The counterfeiters and vandals have had decades of leniency. What has it produced? A country where a mother buys medicine for a sick child and prays it is real. A country where the oil in the pot might be dye and the pepper might be poison. That is not a country. That is a slow execution of a whole people, carried out one meal and one tablet at a time.
We also ask the harder question. Why has the state allowed this to happen? Why does NAFDAC have to choose between the supermarket and the open market where most Nigerians actually shop? Why does the National Policy on Food Safety and Quality hand responsibility to local governments that have no resources, no personnel and often no will to inspect a single stall? Why is there no environmental health officer testing palm oil in the 774 local government areas of this federation?
These are questions for the President and the governors, not only for the legislature. They require money, coordination and political will. They require a government that treats food safety as seriously as it treats security.
But better institutions will not save us if the law remains a paper tiger. The punishment must match the crime.
This is not revenge. It is deterrence. It is prevention. It is a message to every man mixing dye into palm oil in a backroom, every trader relabelling expired whisky, every syndicate pushing counterfeit drinks onto supermarket shelves in Abuja, every vandal cutting down a tower in the dark. If you profit from the death and suffering of Nigerians, you will pay with your life. The state will not negotiate. It will not accept a fine. It will not look away.
The criminals have declared war on the Nigerian people. It is time for the law to declare war on them.
Spear News Nigeria stands with the victims of counterfeit drugs and adulterated food. We stand with the communities left in darkness. We call on the National Assembly to act now. Make the laws. Declare counterfeiting and vandalism capital offences. Punishable by execution.
Nothing less will protect us. Nothing less is justice.
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