Prohibition of "Illicit" Alcohol in Colonial Nigeria: A Study in the Tenacity of Ogogoro (Local Gin) in Urhoboland, Southern Nigeria, 1910 - 1950

This paper examined the tenacity of Ogogoro (local gin) in Urhoboland, Southern Nigeria following British prohibition of its production and distribution in colonial Nigeria. This paper argued that the emergence of local or home-made gin as a competitor to imported alcohol generally referred to as "trade spirits" primarily informed attempts to outlaw its production and distribution through series of liquor laws. This paper also argued that efforts by the colonial authorities to discourage local consumption of imported alcohol by persistently imposing ever-increasing custom duties and taxes on it amounted to playing to the gallery by attempting to satisfy the international anti-liquor lobby represented by temperance societies, humanitarian evangelicals and other economic interests that had persistently opposed alcohol consumption by the native population on health and moral grounds. Confronted with the absence of viable alternative sources of colonial financing, it is not difficult to locate where imperial interest lay: imposing ever increasing duties and taxes on alcohol generated huge revenue receipt. Ironically, rather than eliminate the market for imported alcohol in line with temperance protestations and in tune with international agreements, higher duties on spirits helped stimulate increase in production and consumption of local gin in Urhoboland following higher retail prices and scarcity of imported alcohol during the First World War. Obviously, legislation was necessary to deal with the unanticipated fiscal threat posed by local gin to colonial finance. However, the liquor statutes, law enforcement personnel and the law courts deployed to check alcohol production and distribution seemed to be effective in curtailing its production only to a limited extent in the mainland or "semi-urban" areas of Urhoboland, but were ineffectual in dealing with the production and distribution of alcohol in the rural areas due to such factors as local sabotage, ingenuity and expertise displayed by brewers and marketers of gin, difficulty in accessing areas of alcohol production, inadequate law enforcement personnel and equipment and above all to an undercurrent of local cultural and economic nationalism which had been built around the home-made gin on account of age-long religious, and socio-cultural usages and attachment to it by Urhobo people.