Ex-President Jonathan’s Cousin Wants Ogogoro Ban Lifted
Azibaola Roberts, the cousin of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has urged the government to lift the ogogoro ban (local gin).
”Today l have the privilege to prick your conscience on some basic things, basic things like Kaikai. As I speak to you, kaikai is illegal in the books of state governments, said Mr Roberts. “Kaikai distillation is a basic occupation of our people. How, for God’s sake, that kaikai is labelled as an illicit drink for over 60 years since after independence is what baffles people like me.”
Mr. Roberts, who made the call while dealing with journalists in Yenagoa, expressed concern that kaikai was still prohibited.
The Bayelsa government outlawed the production and consumption of the locally distilled drink in June 2015, following the deaths of 20 persons in Ondo who had consumed it.
Other Niger Delta states followed suit and made ogogoro illegal.
He went on to say that it was a tactic by colonial masters to retain their distilleries in Europe by branding artisanal distilleries’ gins as “illicit,” and he wondered why the discriminatory label hadn’t been removed yet.
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He claims that alcoholic brands brewed abroad are no different from those brewed locally, and that the notion that local drinks are inferior is false and unsupported by science.
He bemoaned the fact that the false belief had hampered the establishment of the local drinks sector, which would have helped alleviate poverty by allowing the local drink to be exported and earn foreign currency.
He urged officials, particularly parliamentarians, to remove the “obnoxious legislation” from the books.
“Those foreign drinks are local drinks of people elsewhere, just like our own Kaikai is brewed here. The only thing is that we have failed to identify the potential of our own and act accordingly,” he reasoned.
Mr Roberts, a lawyer and rights activist, argued that basic science clearly showed that “alcohol is alcohol and produced through the same basic process of distillation.”
“People spend up to N60,000 per bottle on foreign gins and do not do the same for the local alcohol,” he stated. “There is no difference between the two. They are all mixture of water and alcohol.”
(NAN)
