Findings by this reporter revealed that many water factories in sokoto are not registered with nafdac and are producing contaminated water for consumption, prioritising profit over residents’ safety.
Some factories deceive residents by printing fake nafdac numbers on their sachet water, making people believe it is safe. Others do not include any nafdac number, while some keep running the factory after their registration expired, violating nafdac regulations.
One factory had been producing water before its registration, and another used different names on packaging and sachets, raising concerns about the misuse of the registration numbers.
In august 2021, nafdac sealed 38 water production companies in sokoto for violating production laws, citing poor quality of sachet water and outbreaks of water-related diseases in the state. This was in response to a cholera outbreak in 2021 that affected 13 lgas in sokoto.
A search on the nafdac portal revealed that 12 water factories are not registered with nafdac but display fake nafdac registration numbers. Ten pure water factories have no nafdac registration numbers on their sachets, and 12 have expired registrations, but they are still producing water.
Nana khadija pure water factory, with nafdac number d1-9254l, has been producing “pure water” for the last four years as confirmed by the owner, but it was just registered on february 29 this year.
Mirhab table water with nafdac number a1-101293l shows a different name, kom table water, on the nafdac registration portal, raising concerns about the potential misuse of another factory’s nafdac registered number.
Moya table water, with nafdac number e1-6894l, produced and packaged by dankano farms nigeria ltd is not registered with nafdac. In addition, likisan table water with registration number e1-7340l is also not registered with nafdac; nageno with number c1-8551l and amare with number e1-4465l are not also registered.
Al-sharif pure water with registration number e1-0164l, kasuwar arewa table water with registration number e1-6932l, and nagenu global investment nigeria limited pure water with registration number c1-8551l are also not registered with nafdac.
Other water production factories not registered with nafdac include albanati with fake registration number e1-4609l, aqua-arg table water with registration number a1-10377741, produced and packaged by amas resources nigeria limited, 414 table water with registration number e1-7338l, danjibo table water with registration number c1-2783l, and nazman table water with registration number d1-4290l. Those registration numbers were not recognised on the nafdac portal, but the companies keep producing “pure water” for the sokoto residents.
N.A.P table water, nasarawa pure water factory, kc tech pure water factory, di-nawa, ajwa pure water factory, arkilla pure water factory, nagoranyo pure water factory, farinab pure water, raudah pure water factory and ndwan do not have any nafdac registration numbers on their sachets.
