The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has called for the rescission of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) ban on sachet alcoholic beverages.
The director-general of MAN, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, stated this yesterday. He argued the ban contradicts agreements reached in the National Alcohol Policy and will lead to job losses, reduced economic activity, and increased illicit trade.
NAFDAC has issued a directive to outrightly ban the production and sale of alcoholic beverages packaged in sachets and small PET bottles by December 31, 2025. This directive followed a resolution reported to have been passed by the Senate at its sitting on November 6, 2025.
Ajayi-Kadir, note that this unexpected development is discordant with all stakeholders’ efforts on the matter and entirely at variance with the existing position of the House of Representatives on the same matter.
He added that the earlier directive for a one-year extension by the Ministry of Health, which culminated in the consideration and validation of the draft National Alcohol Policy by stakeholders, should have been considered before any major official pronouncement by another arm of the government.
“We also believe that a stakeholders’ consultation, either through a public hearing or focused meetings with relevant stakeholders in the alcohol beverages industry, should have been called by the relevant Senate Committee before a ban is ordered.
This was the route that the House of Representatives painstakingly followed in the recent past,” he stated.
Ajayi-Kadir emphasised that the issues concerning the ban on alcohol in sachets and small PET bottles were resolved by an enlarged Committee comprising all the stakeholders and NAFDAC representatives, who validated the National Alcohol Policy in October 2025.
He added, “We would like to place on record that several empirical research have dismissed the unfounded and untested statement of abuse by minors that the government independently conducted.
The industry has even gone further, notwithstanding the report of the surveys, to initiate a series of campaigns in respect of responsible alcohol consumption to discourage underage abuse. These campaigns have necessitated an industry spend of over a billion naira in advertisements at all levels of media outreach across the federation and have been very impactful in discouraging abuse by underage persons.”
Ajayi-Kadir further stated that the reported directive by the Senate for an outright ban is unfair and against the run of play in the industry, given the fact that the upper chamber appears only to have considered the opinion of NAFDAC, which, necessarily, were part of the validation that was organised by the agency’s supervisory Ministry, the Ministry of Health.
He added that “this decision may have significant negative consequences for the economy, particularly at a time when it is stabilising, saying that potential repercussions include a loss of over N1.9 trillion in investments by Nigerian companies, significant layoffs affecting over 500,000 direct employees and about five million indirectly, and setbacks in manufacturing capacity utilisation.
According to MAN DG, we therefore make a strident appeal for an expedited endorsement and implementation of the validated Nigeria National Alcohol Policy and its multi-sectoral implementation framework.
“We believe that this will make the implementation of the unwarranted ban unnecessary. We appeal to the Senate to rescind the Order on the ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages in sachets and for NAFDAC to be restrained from implementing the ban from December 31, 2025.
“We should be mindful of the economic implications of unnecessary sudden regulatory shifts that could have significant implications for legitimate manufacturers, thousands of employees and informal value‑chain operators across the country.”
