By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS

 From a local drink celebrated by the old and young in rural areas, palm wine appears to have caught the attention of city dwellers in many parts of Nigeria, particularly in the south.

Sweet, seemingly harmless but crudely intoxicating, palm wine has become a choice drink in social and traditional gatherings, competing among guests with drinks brewed in industries with much sophistication.

Palm wine, when fermented, is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree such as the palmyra, date palms and coconut palms. It is served chilled in many relaxation joints.

The drink is called different names among different peoples of Nigeria.

It is known as emu or oguro among the Yorubas of the southwest; ukot mmong among the Anang people of the south-south Akwa Ibom State, mmanya among the Igbo, and gya in Hausa dialect.

Palm wine tapping is a profession on its town in villages.

"The sap is extracted and collected by a tapper," Odion Okpe, a palm tapper, told The Anadolu Agency.

"Typically, the sap is collected from the cut part of the palm tree," he explained.

A container, or agbe in local Yoruba dialect, is fastened to the flower stump to collect the sap.

Apart from the tapper climbing the tree to extract the wine, the other system is the outright cutting of the whole tree - following which fire is lit at the cut end to hasten the collection of the drink.

The liquid tends to be very sweet and non-alcoholic before it is fermented.

"Many take it raw," said Okpe.

"At that level, it is not alcoholic," he explained. "You can take as many sips of it without getting intoxicated."

Popular

Palm wine is a foremost drink among many people in Nigeria, including students.

The Kegite Club, a popular sociocultural movement of students established in 1960s across many Nigerian tertiary institutions, has the palm wine as its official drink with the palm tree as its insignia.

"We see the palm wine as a traditional African drink," Mogaji Omodele, a Kegite member at the Lagos State University, told AA.

"It is what we drink," he said. "Our members, even after graduation, are encouraged to make it their official drink."

"It is a way of promoting Africa for Africans," Omodele suggested.

Across some relaxation spots in Lagos, Nigeria's most populous city, a 150-centilitre bottle of palm wine is sold for $1.1 - or higher, depending on which area of the commercial town the drink is being sold and for whom.

Some people believe the drink has medicinal value.

Several local herbs are soaked with palm wine and taken in prescribed dosage.

"I used to drink beer and other brewed drinks before but the noise about diabetes and related diseases has made me to choose palm wine which is natural," Segun Ogunwale, a civil engineer, told AA.

It is not immediately clear if the palm wine does have the sugar content that makes people run away from the distilled drinks.

But Lookman Kareem, a physician, categorizes the palm wine as alcohol whose extreme consumption may well bring the same dangers for which medical experts have cautioned against.

"Yes it does have some medicinal value but people must be careful what we mean by this because even water has medicinal value," he told AA.

"What you get in standard [medical] journals is that moderate consumption of alcohol has medicinal value, that it helps the heart in a way," Kareem explained.

"But because most people, ordinary people, cannot quantify what is moderate it is generally said that people should avoid it," he said.

"Consumption of alcohol, like palm wine, has psychological effects ranging from excitement, euphoria to ecstasy," noted the physician.

"Normally, human beings are ordinarily restrained by moral or religious values but you lose inhibition when you take alcohol, including palm wine, to the point of intoxication," he said.

Although Islam outlaws consumption of intoxicants, Muslims, estimated to constitute more than half of the Nigerian population, are divided over whether they can take palm wine or not.

"I am a bit confused over whether or not to take emu," Abdusemi'i Bello, a bread baker in his late 30s, told AA.

"This is because not all emu is intoxicating, though some are," he explained.

"I was taking it before but I stopped when I read that it is an intoxicant," Bello asserted.

"But the truth is that palm wine is increasingly popular these days in parties because many see it as natural and medicinal," he noted.