Nigeria’s healthcare sector has come under pressure following the exit of foreign pharmaceutical companies, a void that has led to rising drug prices and fears of substandard products. A video recently circulating on social media claimed local authorities arrested a man for manufacturing counterfeit drugs in a dilapidated building. However, the failure occurred 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,” an X reads after published on September 22, 2024 and shared more than 600 times.
The video attached to the post has been viewed more than 930,000 times.
The logo of Channels Television, a media organization in Nigeria, appears in the video. The news headline at the bottom of the screen reads: “Police discover alleged fake drug factory in Lagos.”
The claim is also circulating on Facebook here, here, hereAnd here.
The name “Emeka Madu” has its roots in the Igbo language (archived here).
Several commenters said the suspect’s name was highlighted to portray Igbos in a bad light.
The post was published by an X account created in August 2022, a month earlier campaigns started before the 2023 presidential elections in Nigeria.
The account’s owner, a declared supporter of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, has also posted critical content about Labor Party leader Peter Obi – the former governor of Anambra State, a region populated by Igbo people (archived here).
While the events described in the claim are largely accurate, the message misleads by framing the images as recent.
Ancient 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 in December 2018 by Channels Television – the same broadcaster whose logo appears in the footage of the bust (archived here).
The video shows security officers arresting a man claiming to be a pharmacist producing a malaria treatment with chloroquine as the active ingredient.
AFP Fact Check compared the original footage with the videos in the fake messages and found they matched.
Madu, identified as a 47-year-old school dropout, was one of four people arrested in the sting and the alleged mastermind behind the group’s production and distribution of the drug in Onitsha, a commercial hub in Awka, the capital of Anambra State.
Regulators issued an alert days after the operation was halted, warning the public counterfeit 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), regulates the quality of food and medicine consumed in Nigeria confirmed Channels broadcast was misrepresented (archived here).
“This arrest took place years ago. Please do not present old news as current events,” the committee responded to the video.
Meanwhile, the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and its French counterpart Sanofi to leave the Nigerian market last year after a devaluation of the currency that seriously affected their operations (archived here).
This has led to a golf 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 here, including messages that promote untested hypertension products.
