Nigeria’s healthcare sector is under pressure following the exit of foreign pharmaceutical companies, a vacuum that has led to soaring drug prices and concerns about substandard products. A video recently circulated on social media claims to show local authorities arresting a man for manufacturing fake drugs in a dilapidated building. However, in 2018, bankruptcy occurred.
“Emeka Madu was arrested on suspicion of manufacturing fake malaria drugs in an unfinished building in Ikotun, Lagos State. Emeka and his associates were arrested at the site where fake drugs were being manufactured for sale to Nigerians. Killed thousands of Nigerians,” reads the X post, which was published on September 22, 2024 and has been shared more than 600 times.
The video attached to the post has been viewed over 930,000 times.
Screenshot of misleading post (taken on September 26, 2024)
The logo of Nigerian media organization Channels Television appears in the video. The news headline at the bottom of the screen reads, “Police bust suspected fake drug factory in Lagos.”
This claim is also being circulated on Facebook here , here , here , and here .
The name “Emeka Madu” has Igbo roots (archived here).
Some commenters said the names of the suspects were highlighted to give a bad impression to the Igbo people.
The post was published by the X account, which was created in August 2022, a month before Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election campaign began.
The owner of the account, who claims to be a supporter of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, has also posted content criticizing Labor Party leader Peter Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, an area with a large Igbo population. (Archive here).
Although the events described in the claim are largely accurate, the post is misleading by framing the footage as recent.
old bust
AFP Fact Check used the InVID WeVerify tool to extract keyframes from the video.
A reverse image search of these images turned up a video published on YouTube by Channels Television in December 2018. Channels Television is the same station whose logo appears in the bust footage (archive here).
The video shows security forces arresting a man claiming to be a pharmacist who manufactures a malaria drug containing chloroquine as the active ingredient.
AFP Fact Check compared the original video with the falsely posted video and found a match.
Screenshot of misleading X post (left) and Channels TV footage from 2018 (right)
Madu, a 47-year-old high school dropout, was one of four people arrested in the sting operation and is believed to be the mastermind behind the group’s drug manufacturing and distribution in Onitsha, a commercial hub in Awka, the Anambra state capital.
Regulators issued a warning days after the shutdown, warning the public about counterfeit medicines in circulation (archived here).
The four appeared in court in January 2019 and were granted bail (see archive here).
On September 25, 2024, the National Agency for Food and Drug Control (NAFDAC), which regulates the quality of food and medicines consumed in Nigeria, confirmed that the channel’s broadcast had been misrepresented (archived here) .
“This arrest happened many years ago. Please stop presenting old news as current events,” the commission said in response to the video.
Meanwhile, British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and its French counterpart Sanofi withdrew from the Nigerian market last year after currency devaluation severely affected their operations (see archive here).
This has led to high drug prices due to limited availability of these products (archived here).
AFP Fact Check debunked several social media posts about health-related issues, including one promoting untested high blood pressure products, as seen here.
