When Bolanle Ositelu, a Nigerian-American girl-child advocate, landed in Nigeria on September 22, 2025, for her cousin’s wedding, she expected a whirlwind of celebration, family reunions, and the kind of Lagos energy you can only experience firsthand, but she left on October 4 with a very different story; one that left her fighting for her kidneys in a Houston hospital.
Ositelu, who narrated her experience to THE WHISTLER, stated that her trip started smoothly.
For six days she stayed at The Wheatbaker Hotel, eating every meal at its restaurant and moving between bridal showers, dinners at upscale restaurants, and nights out at clubs.
“Mommy’s night out” and other pre-wedding gatherings filled her calendar, and she said she had no issues during that time.
The trouble began after she checked into a newly built loft Airbnb in Victoria Island and started eating outside food.
“I did not eat or purchase food from any local markets. I mainly ate traditional Nigerian dishes, and one of the first places I tried near my Airbnb was a local spot which everyone highly recommended. Unfortunately, that’s when my problems began,” she explained.
Ositelu stated that she avoided local markets entirely, but the bottled water she drank at many establishments didn’t taste fresh, even though she kept drinking it.
Her days also included social outings in Lekki, Banana Island, Victoria Island, and a trip to Ogun State, where she occasionally had champagne like Ace of Spades and other drinks like Casa Azul and 1942.
She wasn’t a heavy drinker, she explained, just someone who enjoyed an occasional drink in company.
She explained that she knew that something was wrong when she started experiencing severe bowel issues and went through about three bottles of stomach relief medication that I had brought from the U.S.
“ Shortly before leaving Nigeria, I started developing fevers, nausea, and intense body pain—especially in my lower back near my kidneys,” Ositelu noted.
By the time she landed in Houston, she went straight from the airport to the emergency room and was admitted immediately due to the severity of her symptoms.
The doctors had immediately run some tests and also listened to her account of the trip.
“I usually get yearly health screenings and have never had any underlying health problems in my life. After running several tests and hearing my story, the doctors determined that I had consumed bad alcohol and had kidney failure.
“However, it wasn’t just kidney failure, I also contracted E. coli, likely from contaminated food or water.
“To give some context, normal kidney function levels are around 100, but mine dropped to 11, which nearly caused complete kidney failure and could have started affecting other organs. As for the E. coli infection, it likely came from something I ate or drank,” Ositelu explained.
She further narrated that she spent three days in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and another three in a regular hospital room at Houston Methodist Hospital, receiving Intravenous (IV) antibiotics and pain relievers.
“ My kidneys are recovering, though they may not fully return to their original state. I’ll need to have checkups twice a year for the next few years to monitor my kidney function, but the E. coli infection has been successfully treated,” she narrated.
What was meant to be a joyful homecoming for a family wedding became a months-long recovery and a warning she now feels compelled to share.
Her story mirrors that of Rocboy, @Tomfordtitan, who raised the alarm after falling seriously ill from what he believes was fake alcohol at a Lagos club.
Rocboy who shared his story on X platform said the drink never made him feel tipsy, but he woke up with severe stomach pain and was later diagnosed with a gastrointestinal infection.
His warning is simple: “If you aren’t sure about the alcohol, don’t drink it. There’s a lot of fake alcohol in Lagos clubs and lounges.”
The problem isn’t isolated. Experts say counterfeit alcohol is fueling Nigeria’s public health crisis, where 25 million people were already living with Chronic Kidney Disease as of 2024, according to the Federal Ministry of Health.
A few weeks ago, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) uncovered two illegal alcohol production syndicates in Lagos, seizing counterfeit and adulterated products worth N350m.
According to the agency, raids at Zamfara Plaza in the Trade Fair Complex and parts of Lagos Island recovered over 1,800 cartons of fake drinks, along with plastic mixing tanks, empty branded bottles, and packaging materials used to produce and distribute them.
The issue has also drawn international attention. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) last year renewed its travel advisory warning citizens about the risk of methanol poisoning from counterfeit or tainted alcohol in eight countries, including Nigeria and Uganda.
According to the FCDO, Methanol is a toxic industrial alcohol also found in antifreeze and paint thinners.
Peddlers of counterfeit alcohol illegally mixed it into spirit-based drinks to cut costs.
The advisory noted a rise in serious illness and deaths linked to contaminated beverages in destinations including Ecuador, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, and Nigeria.
Speaking on the issue, a quality assurance expert and public analyst specializing in food, drugs, and beverages, Dr. Abubakar Danraka, disclosed that counterfeit and adulterated alcohol has reached endemic levels in Nigeria and now poses a serious public health threat.
“The situation we are in Nigeria is very, very endemic,” Danraka said in an interview with THE WHISTLER. “Everywhere you go, the chances of getting a fake or adulterated drink are like one in three. Hardly will you select three bottles randomly without getting one.”
He said both the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Spirits and Wines Association of Nigeria (SWAN) agree on the scale of the problem, which cuts across popular and unknown brands alike.
“In many markets, they will ask you, ‘Do you want original or the one that is manageable?’ The originals are not even on display,” he said.
Danraka explained that the main health risk comes from methanol, an industrial alcohol used in antifreeze and paint thinners, which is being used to replace ethanol in fake drinks because it is cheaper and readily available.
“Methanol is three to four times cheaper than ethanol and readily available,” he said. “It looks the same and smells similar, but the body metabolizes it into formaldehyde and formic acid, which are highly toxic.”
The effects, he said, escalate quickly from dizziness to low blood pressure, severe abdominal pain, liver and kidney damage, blindness, coma, and death in high doses.
He noted that methanol produces a stronger and faster intoxication than ethanol, making the danger less obvious to drinkers.
“With normal alcohol, you take a cup and manage yourself. With methanol, if you take less than a cup, the intoxication is higher times two,” Danraka said.
He advised consumers to look for physical signs of tampering, including inconsistent fill levels, misspelled brand names, cheap packaging, and the absence of the typical ‘pop’ sound when opening non-alcoholic wines and some spirits. Price is another red flag.
“If you’re buying a bottle for N12,000 and you see it for N4,500 or N7,500, know that something is wrong,” he said.
Danraka also stressed the importance of buying from reputable suppliers, warning that purchasing alcohol anywhere increases the chances of getting a fake product.
