WARNING: Do not take Fanta or Sprite with Vitamin C; Coca Cola Nigeria don mess up!

A Lagos High Court in Igbosere, Lagos State, has ordered the National Agency For Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to forthwith mandate Nigeria Bottling Company PLC, manufacturers of Fanta and Sprite soft drinks, to include a written warning that the content of the bottles cannot be taken with Vitamin C.

From this judgement, the lesson is simple – until the Nigeria Coca Cola company publicly state that they’ve amended the identified errors, DO NOT TAKE FANTA OR SPRITE WITH THE DRUG, VITAMIN C!

So, how these gbege take happen?

Apparently, a civil law case filed by one Dr. Emmanuel Fijabi Adebo against Coca Cola Bottling Company of Nigeria, manufacturers of Fanta and Sprite, has been ongoing for 10 years (since 2007) prior to this judgement.

This Dr Adebo, had in 2007, bought large quantities of Fanta and Sprite drinks from Coca Cola Ltd for the purpose of export to the “naija consumers” in the United Kingdom.

However, on reaching the England, the regulatory body there tested and discovered “poisonous levels of  Benzoic Acid and Sunset addictives”, in the contents, and were therefore declared “unfit for human consumption”. That was how Dr. Fijabi lost the consignment worth millions of naira.

Dr. Fijabi Adebo then sued the Nigeria Bottling Company Plc and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for breach of duty of care to its customers, and loss of earnings.

Funnily, Coca Cola Nigeria had the guts to claim that Mr Fijabi did not tell them he was going to Export the Fanta and Sprite to England and that those bottles were manufactured, in their words, “for local consumption”.

So Coca Cola Nigeria is trying to tell us that if they knew the Fanta and Sprite Dr. Fijabi bought were to be exported to England, they would not have added poisonous levels of the benzoic acid and the other poison? That, it is okay for Nigerians to drink the poison?

How did this case even drag for 10 years? What kind of stupefying defense or reason is this that Coca-Cola Nigeria put up for their clear mess-up? Did they even think about how very cheap and easy people can get Vitamin C down here at all? The fact that this combination of their poison with vitamin C can predispose to cancer? Odiegwu oh!

Well, finally, the court don hammer them as stated above, and also declared that NAFDAC has failed the citizens of Nigeria by its certification as satisfactory for human consumption, products which in the United Kingdom failed sample test for human consumption and which became poisonous in the presence of Ascorbic Acid ordinarily known as Vitamin C, which can be freely taken by unsuspecting members of the public with Fanta and Sprite.

The judge, Justice Adedayo Oyebanji, also ordered Coca Cola to henceforth add a written warning on Fanta and Sprite bottles that “this product must not be taken with Vitamin C.”