The Uprising of Awareness - by Quietly Loud

Lately, it feels as though Nigerians are becoming increasingly aware of what they consume, what they use on their bodies, and what they put into their homes. People are questioning their food. They are questioning their cosmetics. They are questioning sanitary products. They are questioning drugs. They are asking questions about cooking utensils, packaging, ingredients, chemicals and everything in between. And honestly, I applaud it. People are becoming more willing to say, “Something is wrong with this.” They are sharing experiences, raising concerns and warning others about products they believe may be harmful. Social media has played a strange role in this. It has certainly created problems of its own, but it has also given ordinary people a microphone. Someone can notice something, speak about it, and suddenly thousands of other people are saying, “Wait. I have experienced this too.” And that is where awareness begins. But there is something I keep thinking about: This did not start today. Fake drugs did not suddenly appear because Nigerians started talking about them online. Fake cosmetics did not suddenly become a problem because someone made a video about them. Counterfeit and substandard products have existed for years. So if we are finally talking about them more loudly, perhaps we should also ask: Where did all of this come from? There is always a process before something becomes a widespread problem. There is a beginning. There are contributing factors. There are people making decisions at different points in the chain. And eventually, something that may have started small becomes normal enough to spread. From my own understanding and opinion, one factor I keep coming back to is greed. And I don’t mean that greed belongs to one particular class of Nigerians. It can exist among the wealthy, the middle class and the poor. There is the person who wants to manufacture something at the lowest possible cost, even if doing so means compromising quality. There is the importer who wants the cheapest possible version because they know there is a market for cheap products. There is the trader who sees an opportunity to make an excessive profit. And then there is the consumer who sees the price of something and says, “Can I get it cheaper?” Let me be clear: wanting something affordable is not greed. Not everyone who searches for a cheaper product is trying to cheat the system. People have different incomes, and affordability matters. In fact, access to affordable medicines is itself part of the problem. WHO identifies high prices and limited access to quality medicines as factors that can push people toward unregulated and potentially unsafe sources. But there is a point where the constant demand for cheaper, cheaper, cheaper creates an incentive to compromise. And that is where I think the conversation becomes complicated. Imagine an importer who wants a particular product but insists that it must be produced as cheaply as possible. A manufacturer somewhere may be willing to meet that price by reducing the quality of the materials. The product can still look almost identical. Same colour. Same packaging. Same appearance. But different quality. And by the time it reaches the consumer, the person buying it may never know what was sacrificed to make it cheaper. This is not me saying that every cheap product is fake or dangerous. Absolutely not. It is me asking whether we have created a culture where price sometimes becomes more important than quality, while regulation struggles to keep up. And then there is the other side. The person who wants to sell something at an extremely high price. The consumer discovers that the product is available somewhere else for much less and decides to bypass the seller. The importer finds another supplier. The supplier finds another manufacturer. The manufacturer finds another way to reduce costs. And somehow, the entire system becomes a cycle. Then we arrive at another word I have been thinking about: CAPITALISM. I don’t think capitalism alone explains the existence of fake products. That would be too simple. But I do think we need to talk about what happens when profit becomes the strongest incentive in a system. When producing something safely costs more than producing it unsafely. When selling an authentic product is less profitable than selling an imitation. When consumers cannot afford the safest option. When regulation is weak. When enforcement does not sufficiently deter offenders. When supply chains become difficult to monitor. When people are willing to look the other way because there is money to be made. These are bigger than individual acts of greed. They become systemic problems. And this is why I don’t think the conversation should stop at, “Don’t buy fake drugs.” We should also be asking: Why are fake drugs able to enter the market in the first place? Why are people able to manufacture them? How do they move through supply chains? Who is supposed to detect them? Why do consumers sometimes have difficulty accessing affordable, genuine products? What happens to the people who deliberately manufacture and distribute them? And what responsibility do consumers have when we knowingly prioritize extremely cheap products without checking their source? NAFDAC and other institutions have regulatory and enforcement responsibilities, and Nigeria has had laws specifically addressing counterfeit and fake drugs for decades. The existence of these laws itself shows that this is not a new problem. So perhaps what we are witnessing now is not the uprising of fake products. Maybe it is the uprising of awareness. The problem has been here. We are simply becoming louder about it. But I don’t want this to be only my opinion. I want to hear yours. What do you think is at the root of the fake product problem in Nigeria? Is it greed? Poverty? Consumer behaviour? Profit-driven businesses? Weak regulation? Poor enforcement? Our supply chains? Lack of awareness? Or a combination of all of these? Because I don’t think one person, one business, one government agency or one consumer created this problem. And if we want to understand how we got here, perhaps we should start asking:“What created a market where the fake product could thrive?”

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