The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in a new documentary has revealed an Indian pharmaceutical company manufacturing unlicensed, addictive opioids and exporting them illegally to West Africa particularly countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Cote D’Ivoire.
The use of these illicit drugs has become national health crisis and security threat in these West African nations as it endangers the lives of thousands to millions of teenagers and the young adult population in the sub region.
The BBC in the documentary aired in Tamale, the northern regional capital, last Thursday, 20th February, 2025, disclosed that, Aveo Pharmaceuticals based in Mumbai, India, makes a range of pills that go under different brand names and are packaged to look like legitimate medicines.
However, all contain the same harmful mix of ingredients – tapentadol, a powerful opioid and carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant.
The investigative reporter who went undercover in this latest investigative piece reports that, this combination of drugs is not licensed for use anywhere in the world and can cause breathing difficulties and seizures to the body. An overdose can kill.
Having traced the drugs back to Aveo’s factory in India, the BBC sent an undercover operative inside the factory who posed as an African businessman looking to supply opioids to Nigeria. The BBC filmed [using a hidden camera] one of Aveo’s directors, Vinod Sharma, showing off the same dangerous products the BBC found for sale across West Africa.
In the secretly recorded footage, the operative tells Sharma that his plan is to sell the pills to teenagers in Nigeria “who all love this product.
“Sharma doesn’t flinch. “Ok,” he replies, before explaining that if users take two or three pills at once, they can “relax” and get “high”.
Towards the end of the meeting, Sharma holds up a box of pills made in his own factory and admits: “This is very harmful for their health, but nowadays, this is business.”
Meanwhile, the documentary also covered the rampant use of the illegal opioids in the Tamale metropolis as a result of which a local voluntary taskforce has been instituted to clampdown on dealers in order to take these pills off the streets.
One of the local chiefs in Tamale, Alhassan Mahama, bemoaned the use of illegal opioids in the area and further asserted that, “The drugs consume the sanity of those who abuse them.”
“Like a fire burns when kerosene is poured on it” one addict in Tamale” one addict in Tamale simply explained. The drugs, he said, “have wasted our lives.”
The Chairman of Nigeria’s Drug and Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Brig Gen Mohammed Buba Marwa, told the BBC that, opioids are “devastating our youths, our families, it’s in every community in Nigeria.”
