Nigeria’s fight against counterfeit and substandard medicines requires more than market raids and the destruction of seized products, as gaps in product authentication, supply-chain visibility and consumer awareness continue to create opportunities for illicit medicines to reach consumers.
Ibrahim Alabi, director of operations at Sproxil, a product authentication and traceability solutions provider, told BusinessDay that the challenge was no longer simply about regulatory willingness but also the capacity to monitor the pharmaceutical market comprehensively.
“Most of them are about depth, capacity and coverage rather than direction,” Alabi said, referring to the gaps in Nigeria’s regulatory system.
Between February and March 2025, simultaneous enforcement operations at Idumota in Lagos, Onitsha and Ariaria in Aba resulted in the seizure of more than 137 forty-foot truckloads of alleged counterfeit and substandard products valued at over N1.5 trillion, according to Alabi.
However, he said such operations would have limited long-term impact if the wider networks behind the production and distribution of fake medicines remained intact.
“Every offender caught has collaborators. If we stop at the shop, we are removing product without removing capacity,” he said.
Alabi called for investigations to extend beyond traders to the financiers, printers, importers and other actors involved in the illicit trade.
“The answer has to be systemic and data-driven rather than episodic,” he said.
He also identified limited product authentication coverage as a major gap in the fight against counterfeiting.
Although the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control’s (NAFDAC) Mobile Authentication Service allows consumers to verify selected products, Alabi said counterfeiters were increasingly targeting products such as cosmetics, rice, beverages, wines and spirits.
He noted that manufacturers in the food, beverage and cosmetics sectors were encouraged to adopt authentication technology but were not generally required to do so.
“The result is that in the categories where counterfeiting may be growing fastest, we have the least insight,” he said.
Sproxil’s 2026 data showed that cosmetics and personal care products generated the highest volume of counterfeit reports on its platform, followed by vitamins and supplements, analgesics and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Antibiotics ranked fourth.
Alabi, however, cautioned that the figures did not represent the overall prevalence of counterfeiting because the platform only captures products carrying verification labels.
He said product authentication needed to be complemented by supply-chain traceability, which would allow regulators to track medicines from manufacturers to the final point of sale.
The Pharmaceutical Products Traceability Regulations, gazetted in October 2024, provide for GS1-compliant two-dimensional DataMatrix codes containing information such as the product’s batch number, expiry date and serial number.
According to Alabi, enforcement is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2027, with coverage expected to extend to all finished pharmaceutical products by January 1, 2029.
“An inspector can walk into a pharmacy, scan a pack and see the manufacturer, the production date, the batch, the expiry and the entire route that pack travelled,” he said.
“Consumer authentication tells you a pack is genuine at the point of sale. Traceability tells you where it has been. Nigeria needs both.”
Phoebe Aimufia, product and AI transformation lead at Sproxil, said artificial intelligence could strengthen the system by identifying unusual patterns in product movement and consumer verification.
“A batch being verified in a location it was never shipped to, or the same code being checked repeatedly from different places, is a strong signal that something is wrong,” she said.
Aimufia said AI could help regulators and manufacturers identify suspicious activity by product, batch and location. However, she noted that incomplete product and distribution records could limit its effectiveness.
“AI is most powerful when it has good data to work with,” she said.
Technology could also help turn consumer complaints into actionable intelligence. Through Sproxil’s Third-Party Investigation service, consumers who receive a counterfeit result can provide details about where and when the product was purchased.
“NAFDAC holds the mandate for investigation, recalls and enforcement,” Aimufia said. “Our role is to make sure that when the agency acts, it acts on solid evidence.”
Beyond public health risks, Alabi said counterfeit medicines also harmed legitimate manufacturers, distributors and government revenue.
“For every pack that is faked, there is one authentic pack not sold. That means one pack not manufactured, one pack not trucked, one pack not taxed,” he said.
He cited research by the Nigerian Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, which he said estimated the annual cost of counterfeit medicines at more than N60 billion in lost drug sales, medical complications and productivity losses.
Alabi also warned that treatment failures could damage confidence in legitimate pharmaceutical brands.
“When a patient takes an antimalarial and does not get better, they do not conclude that they bought a fake. They conclude that the brand does not work,” he said.
To reduce their risk, he advised consumers to scratch the verification panel on medicine packs, reveal the PIN and authenticate the product before use.
“The label is an invitation to check, not a certificate,” he said.
The refreshed Sproxil labels offer two verification channels: WhatsApp for consumers with internet access and USSD for those using basic mobile phones without an internet connection. Sproxil’s Snap to Verify feature on WhatsApp also allows consumers to authenticate products by simply taking a photograph of the label.
Sproxil said it had placed verification labels on approximately 5.1 billion product units in Nigeria since its partnership with NAFDAC began.
As traceability enforcement approaches, Aimufia urged manufacturers to serialise products at source, while distributors, pharmacies and healthcare professionals should encourage consumers to verify their medicines.
“Consumers hold more power than they often realise,” she said. “When people make verification a habit and ask for products that can be verified, they create demand that pulls the whole system forward.”
