The Senate has told the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and other relevant regulatory organizations to vigorously implement the ban on packaging high-strength alcoholic drinks in sachet formats starting next month, December 2025.
Channels TV says that the lawmakers also decided that the present moratorium should not be extended any further.
The resolution came after Senator Asuquo Ekpeyong’s proposal to stop the phase-out of alcoholic beverages packed in sachets from going any further.
Senator Ekpeyong, who led the debate in the plenary, reminded the Senate that NAFDAC had announced a phased ban on the importation, manufacture, and distribution of alcohol packaged in sachets, in line with international best practices and after talking to a lot of people in the industry.
He said that in 2018, the Federal Ministry of Health, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), NAFDAC, and industry groups like the Association of Food, Beverage & Tobacco Employers (AFBTE) and the Distillers and Blenders Association of Nigeria (DIBAN) all signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on their own.
The MoU said they will slowly stop making these kinds of items because of growing health and societal concerns about how easy they are to get, how cheap they are, and how portable they are, especially for kids, teens, commercial drivers, and other vulnerable groups.
The congressman remembered that even though the deadline was set, the federal government gave producers an extra year in 2024 to use up their old stock and switch to packaging that met the new standards. This pushed the phase-out back to December 2025.
Senator Ekpeyong, on the other hand, was worried that certain firms were still pushing for another extension as the deadline approached. He said this weakens regulatory authority, puts public health at risk, and distorts fair competition in the market.
He said that making high-strength alcoholic drinks in sachet form will keep young people addicted, cause car accidents, make them drop out of school, and lead to other societal problems.
After a short discussion, the Senate decided to tell the Federal Ministry of Health to likewise do rid of anything that would stop NAFDAC from doing its job of enforcing the law.
The MPs also requested the Ministry of Health to speed up the issuance of the National Alcohol Policy. This policy should clearly ban the packaging of high-strength alcoholic beverages in sachets and encourage coordinated public awareness activities.
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