# Nigeria

Country page of DA Caps, a collection of beer bottle caps. Web page: https://dacaps.imcoll.com/country/ng/info

- Official name: Federal Republic of Nigeria
- Local name: Jamhuriyar Taraiyar Nijeriya
- Caps in the collection: 52 (https://dacaps.imcoll.com/country_caps/110)
- Brands: 23

## Beer in Nigeria

Nigeria's first beers were brewed at home. Burukutu, a beer of guinea corn (sorghum) and millet, was made mainly by women for social and ritual occasions long before colonial rule; among the Tiv of Benue it had a central place in festivals and cults. British measures such as the Native Liquor Ordinance of 1917 threatened it, but with a monetised economy it became a trade good, drunk among others by the tin miners of Jos. Factory beer came as an import: Guinness stout is recorded in Nigeria from the early 1900s, and in the 1940s and 1950s the United Africa Company (UAC) sold Guinness and other brands from abroad.

Industrial brewing began in Lagos. UAC had no brewing experience, so in 1946 it incorporated Nigerian Brewery Limited with technical help from Heineken, and John Holt, GBO, SCOA, CFAO and UTC took shares. The Iganmu brewery, built in 1947-49, bottled the first STAR lager in June 1949; Star led the market by 1960. Nigerian Breweries added Aba in 1957, Kaduna in 1963, Ibadan in 1982, Enugu in 1993 and Ama in 2003, and launched Gulder in 1970. Guinness Nigeria, set up in the 1950s, built the first Guinness brewery outside Britain and Ireland at Ikeja, Lagos, in 1962 (the first Foreign Extra Stout was brewed on 30 November 1963), was listed on the stock exchange in 1965 and added Benin (1974 and 1978), Ogba (1982) and Aba (2004). Nigeria is Guinness's second-biggest market.

Several states ran breweries of their own: Champion at Uyo (commissioned in 1976), International Breweries at Ilesha (production from December 1978, with Germany's Warsteiner group as technical partner), Pabod at Port Harcourt (commissioned in 1982) and Golden Guinea at Umuahia. The ban on imported malted barley in 1988 ended that era. Only Guinness and Heineken could afford to make beer from sorghum and maize, and by the mid-1990s they held close to 90% of the market; a former Guinness manager writes that it shrank from 12-13 million hectolitres in the 1980s to about 4 million, and that the thirty or so breweries of the peak fell to a handful.

Foreign groups returned in the 2000s. SABMiller entered through Pabod, a state brewery revived in 2007-08, and agreed on 27 November 2008 to buy a majority, after Nigerian Breweries had taken Pabod to court over the shape of its Grand bottle. On 30 August 2012 SABMiller opened a US$100 million brewery at Onitsha for Intafact Beverages, the home of Hero lager. After AB InBev bought SABMiller in 2016, Pabod, Intafact and International Breweries were merged into International Breweries Plc in 2017, which opened the US$250 million Gateway brewery at Sagamu in 2018. Nigerian Breweries, Heineken's company, bought the Sona Group breweries in 2010 and merged with Consolidated Breweries (33 Export) in 2014; Heineken also took a majority of Champion Breweries.

After a ₦106 billion loss in 2023, Nigerian Breweries announced in April 2024 a recovery plan with a rights issue of up to ₦600 billion and the temporary suspension of two of its nine breweries; in 2025 it returned to profit on group revenue of ₦1.5 trillion. On 11 June 2024 Diageo agreed to sell its 58.02% of Guinness Nigeria to the Singapore group Tolaram for ₦103.7 billion; the sale closed on 30 September 2024, Diageo keeping the Guinness brand under licence. In July 2026 International Breweries, profitable again since 2025, proposed to clear ₦191 billion of accumulated losses so as to pay dividends. Craft beer is tiny: Bature Brewery, begun in Abuja in 2017, makes about 22,000 litres a month in Lagos.

Sources:
- [Wikipedia: Nigerian Breweries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Breweries)
- [Nigerian Breweries: Plc records N1.5 trillion group revenue in 2025 (2026)](https://www.nbplc.com/?p=27204)
- [Food Business Africa: Nigerian Breweries announces company-wide reorganisation, temporary suspension of two breweries (2024)](https://www.foodbusinessmea.com/nigerian-breweries-announces-company-wide-reorganisation-temporary-suspension-of-two-breweries/)
- [Gazette: Nigerian Breweries records net loss of N106 billion, to raise N600 billion via rights issue (2024)](https://gazettengr.com/nigerian-breweries-records-net-loss-of-n106-billion-to-raise-n600-billion-capital-via-rights-issue/)
- [Guinness Nigeria: Our history](https://www.guinness-nigeria.com/our-history/)
- [Nairametrics: Why Tolaram's N104 billion acquisition of Guinness Nigeria is a game changer (2024)](https://nairametrics.com/2024/06/12/why-tolarams-n104-billion-acquisition-of-guinness-nigeria-is-a-game-changer/)
- [Billionaires.Africa: Tolaram's $70M Guinness Nigeria bet is now worth $355M (2026)](https://www.billionaires.africa/2026/07/29/mohan-vaswanis-tolaram-turned-diageos-70-million-guinness-nigeria-exit-into-355-million/)
- [Wikipedia: International Breweries plc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Breweries_plc)
- [ThisDay: Day Nigeria's biggest brewery berthed in Sagamu (2018)](https://www.thisdaylive.com/2018/09/21/day-nigerias-biggest-brewery-berthed-in-sagamu/)
- [Brandspurng: International Breweries to merge with two other firms after SEC, NSE approval (2017)](https://brandspurng.com/2017/09/06/international-breweries-to-merge-with-two-other-firms-after-sec-nse-approval/)
- [Vinetur: International Breweries proposes capital restructuring to erase NGN191.03 billion in losses (2026)](https://www.vinetur.com/en/international-breweries-proposes-capital-restructuring-to-erase-ngn19103-billion-in-losses.html)
- [Brauwelt: SABMiller to buy majority stake in Pabod Breweries (2008)](https://brauwelt.com/en/international-report/africa/626087-sabmiller-to-buy-majority-stake-in-pabod-breweries)
- [Wikipedia: Champion Breweries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_Breweries)
- [BusinessDay: Never Quite The Insider (2019)](https://businessday.ng/?p=360436)
- [Dzeka and Asortse: Alcoholic Beverage (Burukutu), Benue State University journal](https://www.bsum.edu.ng/journals/bevajoh/vol19n1and2/download.php?id=45)
- [Continuity and Change in Indigenous Beer Entrepreneurial Activity of Women in Jos Metropolis, Nigeria: 1909-1995](https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/20547)
- [TimesLIVE (Reuters): Bature Brewery taps into Nigeria's beer market (2025)](https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2025-07-29-in-pics--bature-brewery-taps-into-nigerias-r125bn-beer-market/)
- [Archontology: Nigeria, Polity Style 1954-1963](https://archontology.org/nations/nigeria/01_polity_1954_63.php)
- [Archontology: Nigeria, Polity Style 1963-2026](https://archontology.org/nations/nigeria/01_polity_1963.php)
- [Wikipedia: Flag of Nigeria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Nigeria)

## Breweries (4)

- [Guinness Nigeria](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/2055.md) — 17 caps, 1950–
- [Intafact Beverages (SABMiller) Ltd.](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/3017.md) — 1 cap, 2012–
- [Nigerian Breweries PLC](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/1856.md) — 33 caps, 1946–
- [Pabod Breweries Ltd.](https://dacaps.imcoll.com/brewery/3012.md) — 1 cap, 1982–