Nigeria’s health sector has come under pressure following the exit of foreign pharmaceutical companies, a void that has led to surging medicine prices and fears of substandard products. A video recently circulated on social media claimed to show local authorities arresting a man for manufacturing fake medicines in a dilapidated building. However, the bust took place in 2018.
“Emeka Madu arrested for making fake Malaria drugs in an uncompleted building in Ikotun, Lagos state. Emeka and his cohorts were arrested at the site where they were manufacturing fake drugs to sell to Nigerians … killing thousands of Nigerians,” reads an X post published on September 22, 2024 and shared more than 600 times.
The video attached to the post has had more than 930,000 views.
The logo of Channels Television, a media organisation in Nigeria, appears in the video. The news headline at the bottom of the screen reads: “Police uncover alleged fake drugs factory in Lagos.”
The claim has also been circulating on Facebook here, here, here, and here.
The name “Emeka Madu” has its roots in the Igbo language (archived here).
Several people who commented said the suspect’s name was highlighted to cast the Igbos in a bad light.
The post was published by an X account created in August 2022, a month before campaigns began for the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria.
A declared supporter of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, the account’s owner has also posted content critical of Labour Party leader Peter Obi — the former governor of Anambra state, a region populated with Igbo people (archived here).
While the events described in the claim are mostly accurate, the post misleads by framing the footage as recent.
Old bust
AFP Fact Check extracted keyframes from the video using the InVID WeVerify tool.
A reverse image search of these images led to a video published on YouTube back in December 2018 by Channels Television — the same broadcaster whose logo appears in the footage of the bust (archived here).
The video shows security operatives arresting a man who claims to be a pharmacist producing a malaria treatment with chloroquine as its active ingredient.
AFP Fact Check compared the original footage to the videos in the false posts and found them to be a match.
Madu, identified as a 47-year-old high school dropout, was one of four people arrested in the sting and the alleged mastermind behind the group’s manufacturing and distribution of the medicine in Onitsha, a commercial hub in Awka, the Anambra state capital.
Regulators issued an alert days after the operation was shut down, warning the public about fake medicines in circulation (archived here).
The four men appeared in court in January 2019 and were granted bail (archived here).
On September 25, 2024, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), which regulates the quality of foods and medicines consumed in Nigeria, confirmed the Channels broadcast was being misrepresented (archived here).
“This arrest happened years ago. Please refrain from presenting old news as current events,” the commission said in reaction to the video.
Meanwhile, British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and its French counterpart Sanofi exited the Nigerian market last year after a currency devaluation that severely affected their operations (archived here).
This has led to a surge in the prices of medicines due to the limited availability of these products (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has debunked several social media posts on health-related issues as seen here, including posts that promote untested hypertension products.
