“Those that are Cooking the Gins”: The Business of Ogogoro in Nigeria during the 1930s

Abstract

Southern Nigerians developed a habit for drinking potent distilled liquor during the 19th century. Such alcoholic beverages were manufactured in Europe and exported to the British colony of Nigeria. Nigerians did not know how to distil alcohol themselves. In the 1930s, however, the technology of alcohol distillation swept the colony, as Nigerians made drinks comparable to imported spirits: ogogoro. Ogogoro made serious headway against the long-standing imported liquor trade. The article reconstructs the extensive small-scale indigenous business of distilling. A sugar index measures the scale of the industry. Distillers succeeded in supplying the local market thirsty for strong drink with a potent, cheap product. For the colonialists, such import substitution proved problematic, as an untaxed, unlicensed product displaced a revenue-earning, highly regulated, legal trade. Condemning the locally distilled liquor as illicit gin, they battled distillers with instruments of the colonial state: by propaganda, through the courts and with police raids.