Heavy and other hazardous drinking practices have significantly decreased among youth in many Western countries. A growing number of studies have also provided possible drivers of such drinking behaviours. However, there is insufficient evidence on this beyond North America and Europe.
Historically, exclusionary drinking norms have been widespread in Nigeria, and alcohol consumption has traditionally been adult men’s prerogative. The same drinking norms, though unwritten, prohibited young people from consuming alcohol in the traditional era. This is because of the belief that they were too immature to handle the intoxicating effects and should be more focused on developing themselves to become responsible adults. However, young people in contemporary Nigeria are transgressing drinking norms for many reasons.
Published in Palgrave Macmillan’s Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences Series, my recent book provides insights on this, highlighting the need to urge caution in generalising youth drinking decline globally.
Overview of the Study in the Book
The study draws on semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with 72 18-24-year-old Nigerians who consume alcohol. The study included heterogeneous participants aiming to generate findings with robust perspectives.
What Did I Find?
Based on participants’ verbal descriptions, both males and females normalise regular heavy drinking and intoxication, enacting identities with such practices. They also consider peers who do not drink as unfashionable. Young men, in particular, consume large quantities of alcohol and get drunk regularly because they believe that the ability to outdrink peers (i.e., hold one’s drink) makes them manlier than peers. Young women also used heavy and other drinking practices to construct non-traditional femininity. Many participants intentionally consumed between six to twelve bottles of beer on a drinking occasion or large amounts of spirits to get drunk, and in their words- ‘to feel abnormal for some time’.
Many drinking styles and practices that did not exist in the past were discussed. For example, both male and female participants regularly engage in drinking games despite acknowledging the risks involved. Many young women book hotel rooms before they begin to intentionally drink excessively. Another drinking practice they discussed is that many of them use herbal alcoholic drinks as aphrodisiacs and sex enhancers even though local culture frowns upon sexual activities among unmarried youth. Overall, the participants were heavy drinkers, and many of them bragged about how they ‘drink well’, ‘drink to stupor’ or ‘drink to bastard’- signifying the importance of alcohol in identity constructions among them.
While I agree that the qualitative design may limit the study’s generalisability, the findings echo recent regional and national quantitative studies in Nigeria. These quantitative studies have shown that drinking and drunkenness prevalence among Nigerian youth is increasing. Their findings further confirmed World Health Organization’s report of 60.3% heavy episodic drinking prevalence among Nigerian youth in 2016.
What Drives Changing Consumption Norms?
Multinational alcohol corporations in Nigeria are largely responsible for the current drinking practices in Nigeria. Since Heineken-owned Nigeria Breweries and Guinness Nigeria established their production plants in 1946 and 1962, the quest to control the largest market share has resulted in aggressive marketing and intense competition among these companies. Women and young people became the primary target in the 1960s. So, young men and women started embracing industry-made drinks. Such competition has become more heated nowadays. These and other multinational alcohol corporations are expanding their production plants and using multiple new marketing tactics. One commenter has indicated that this may be a way to recoup profit lost in countries where youth are shunning alcohol.
Of course, alcohol companies compete to make profits not only in Nigeria. The difference is that they know their limits in countries with stringent regulations. In Nigeria, there are no alcohol control policies to date, so alcohol marketing is mainly unregulated. Alcohol companies in Nigeria leverage the lack of rules to engage in practices that are outlawed in their countries of origin. Findings in the book show that alcohol producers produce herbal alcoholic beverages and call these products sexually explicit names. They also market these products to young men, and this contributes to alcohol consumption and related harms because these herbal drinks are highly potent spirit-based. They also encourage sexual risks because sexual encounters under the influence of alcohol expose youth to many harms.
Marketers also use drinking games as a marketing strategy. When introducing a new product, they use open vans or trucks to promote it in the streets. Sometimes, they give out free drinks and ask receivers to compete by playing first-to-finish drinking games. The winner (the fastest drinker) is rewarded with money, additional alcohol, or both.
Alcohol corporations in Nigeria also use music festivals to market their brands. Music festivals such as Star Trek have been held in several states in Nigeria. The Guinness Music Show is also held daily in Benin between December and January each year. While these events are not illegal, they encourage excessive drinking and drunkenness because they fuse entertainment with alcohol and lure young people to such environments where sales promotions and the factors outlined above make resisting drinking difficult. Recent and previous research shows that it is also challenging to identify underage drinkers in such events because Nigeria does not have efficient ways to prove one’s age. Alcohol marketers also want profits and can sell drinks to whoever can pay.
Way Forward
Nigeria is already currently grappling with severe substance use problems among young people, warranting urgent actions. Alcohol availability and easy accessibility often fuel consumption, which increases alcohol-related harms. Alcohol is readily available in Nigeria because of the unregulated activities of the industry. Although alcohol is a legal drug, it causes three million deaths annually worldwide. Young people in Nigeria also contributed to one of the highest heavy episodic drinking in Africa in 2016. So, if Nigeria wants to address rising youth drinking, it should implement national alcohol control policies to reduce alcohol availability and reduce the influence of the alcohol industry. Nigeria should also enforce such measures properly to achieve the aim. Alcohol corporations that associate alcoholic bitters with sex or use drinking games to sell drinks should be banned. Multinational alcohol corporations in Nigeria should be monitored closely to avoid supplanting such regulations in their pursuit of profit at the expense of public health. Also, there is a need to design and spread messages that will encourage young people to shun alcohol as their counterparts are doing in Western countries. The general public should be informed about the harms associated with alcohol and the need to checkmate the activities of the industry that fall short of international standard practices. This will help to avoid the frustration recently faced by NAFDAC when it tried to ban sachet alcohol.
Written by Dr Emeka W. Dumbili, Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow, School of Sociology, University College Dublin.
All IAS Blogposts are published with the permission of the author. The views expressed are solely the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute of Alcohol Studies.