Ogogoro no dey sour

By Josef Omorotionmwan
OGOGORO is a local gin brewed originally from raffia palm. With time, a lot of adulterations produced from cheap chemicals have been located in most markets.

In the 1980s, a popular Nigerian musician hit the airwaves with a number that rose quite high on the music chat of that time, “Ogogoro no dey sour”, which means that ogogoro doesn’t get sour, no matter how long it stays.

This is perhaps the equivalent of the view they hold in the West about their wine – it gets better with age.

But truly, no organisation can grow much higher than the environment in which it exists. That explains why, in Nigeria today, ogogoro has become sour, both in taste and functionality – all because corruption, which is virtually a way of life, has also crept into the industry, no thanks to the merchants of death.

We wonder what can be sourer than the “ogogoro-mania” currently ravaging the entire country. In August 2010, authorities of Benue State cried out that the workforce base was hopelessly weakening by the day and the awkward situation was quickly traced to excess consumption of ogogoro.

It would be recalled that Benue State is basically agrarian. Not only was the drug of addiction weakening the youths and making them unable to engage meaningfully in the normal agricultural pursuit, it was also responsible for most early deaths among them.

As happened in the case of marijuana, the authorities in Benue State soon began to see ogogoro as an intoxicant sought after primarily as something that gives pleasure and sensation to its user. It also provides a spiritually redeeming morning-after hangover. They saw its use as a pleasurable, hedonistic, non-productive and sinful practice, which as a social, legal and philosophical entity, had assumed menacing proportion.

To the authorities in Benue State, the test of a humane society does not lie in the respect it pays to the strongest and most articulate; but that which it accords to the weakest and least articulate. They could not see themselves doing nothing while ogogoro was taking its toll on people. A law was quickly put in place – criminalising the production, possession, sale and use of ogogoro. They made the penal sanctions to be imposed on convicted ogogoro offenders comparable to those that obtained for arson, robbery, burglary and other felonies.

In April 2015, there was an outbreak of ogogoro-mania at Ode-Irele, a community in Ondo State, where over 20 people allegedly died after drinking ogogoro.

In the Irele case, the illness leading to the death of the ogogoro victims was initially thought to be the Ebola virus disease or similar virulent infectious diseases.

Before the dust generated by the Irele deaths could settle, there was a major outbreak of another round of deaths caused by contaminated ogogoro in Rivers State.

The Rivers State episode was initially difficult to locate. Some called it death from dog meat pepper soup. It all started at a popular dog meat joint in Woji, a community in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, where friends had gathered to celebrate one  of their own who had just been given a chieftaincy title; and at the party, ogogoro and dog meat pepper soup flowed freely.

At the last count, no fewer than 71 people had perished in various parts of Rivers State as a direct result of the consumption of the contaminated liquor.

In an attempt to stem further ogogoro deaths, the Federal Government, through the National Agency for Foods, Drugs Administration and Control, NAFDAC, has slammed a blanket ban on the production, sale and consumption of the distilled gin.

As would be expected, this has not gone down well with the producers, sellers and consumers of the favourite drink of most people in the Niger Delta sub-region.

Again, perhaps unwittingly, by trying to prevent death, the Federal Government is bringing about more deaths. In the process, the Federal Government is throwing away the dirty bath-water, the bath-tub and the baby. The few core Deltans we spoke to in the course of writing this piece, all agree that a ban on ogogoro is more of a death sentence on them because ogogoro production and distribution is a major legitimate industry in the Niger Delta.

Why must the Federal Government always follow the path of least resistance? Having agreed that corruption has crept into the ogogoro industry through adulterations by the use of cheap chemicals like ethanol and methanol; couldn’t the Federal Government have gone after the importers of the evil products and possibly, closed down the production lines of those using the addictive? Couldn’t NAFDAC regulate and issue approval numbers to those genuinely engaged in the business?

In the fight against corruption, no one has ever sought to ban the use of money; and in the fight against fake drugs, we have never sought to outlaw the use of all drugs. Rather, we have always sought to remove the corrupt particles in the economy. Why, then, are we placing a blanket ban on ogogoro?

The situation before us today is akin to placing a total ban on fuel simply because we have stumbled on some adulterated petrol.

Why are we so quick at forgetting our little beginnings? No one of the Niger Delta extraction will in any way under-rate the importance the people attach to this liquor.

If you like, bring in the choicest wines, the best champagne, the best brandy and the best whisky; there are aspects of many ceremonies in the Niger Delta that will be incomplete if ogogoro does not report.

Again, how else do you cure those incessant malaria fever attacks without those roots and herbs properly fermented in ogogoro? How else do the fishermen keep the cold breeze at bay in their fishing expedition on the high sea without the occasional sips?

And how does that political leader, who cannot yet afford the Western drinks, keep his followers other than by the possession of bottles of different medicinal roots carefully conserved in ogogoro?

Source: Vanguard