By Emmanuel Unah

CALABAR—WHILE worshipers trooped to different churches during the last Easter Sunday celebration in Calabar, the capital of Cross River State, a group of nine giddy-looking young men surrounded a bottle of drink at a murky street curve at 7am. They took turns to fill their tumblers with the dark liquid content, which they guzzled down their throats.

On closer inspection, it was understandable that they were drunk already, as they razzed ltheir voices loudly, embroiled in animated arguments and making extravagant gestures with their arms and other parts of their bodies.

Unsurprisingly, the sight has become familiar in most parts of Calabar, where as early as 5am, some young men assemble in shanty shops to guzzle large quantity of the brew called Combined. 

The making of Combined

The name Combined is derived from various input that produce the drink— a mixture of ethanol, a chemical substance used in laboratories and mortuaries; local herbs, and crushed marijuana seeds or leaves, which makes the concoction more potent far beyond the regular whisky, dry gin or kaikai (kpeteshi).

Partakers of the concoction say the mixture is highly potent and addictive. It is known to transport the drinkers to long periods of slumber and habitually drives them to hallucination and criminal activities.

For these reasons, the blend is officially banned in the state, but the ban is ineffective as nobody has been prosecuted for drinking or trading in the substance outside the police raids of shops and extortion of money from sellers and drinkers.

Ramshackle environment

As if to demonstrate contempt for the drinkers, sellers hardly provide them with proper seats and conducive environment, rather they are often consigned to rickety improvised seats at the back or obscure corners of the shop. To find out what the nine men were drinking, Niger Delta Voice reporter stepped out of the car and walked toward them.

Four of them were seated on a makeshift bench made of a rough wooden plank placed on a broken cement block with one half at each end, while the rest sat on broken weather-beaten plastic seats, which obviously have been left in the rain and sun for ages.

No entry for non-members

Looking unkempt and malnourished, obviously from the effect of prolonged consumption of the illicit stuff, one of them on sighting the reporter with a camera became agitated and demanded to know his mission in the place. “What do you want here? Don’t you know this is a club and non-members cannot come here without invitation?” the frantic man, who said he is a policeman, barked, rising to his full height as he flashed his faded identity card.

The group, however, softened up when the reporter, who spent almost two hours in the joint, said he was new to the city and had been driving round to locate one of such spots to take a “sip” before heading to the church.

When a drinker died

“Now you are welcome, but you have to buy a bottle for us if you want to sit with us,” another with the accent of a northerner said. After the seller, Eka Koko, produced a Coca-Cola bottle of the stuff on the instruction of the reporter, the drinkers opened up, saying they were discussing the burial of one of them, who died a day earlier and how the family lampooned the deceased even at death for wasting his life on Combined.

“The man took what he loved and yet the family would not let him be, now that he has died, better for him and for them,” one of them, who claimed to be a university don said.

Leave our business alone—seller

Asked why she was selling the drink in contravention of government orders, the seller said: “Has government been able to stop the sale of Igbo that is making people mad every day? Or is it this drink that makes people cheerful that they can ban? Okay, let us see.” She confessed that many of her customers often pass away owing to some ailments, but queried: “Are you saying that those who do not drink Combined do not die? Let us be truthful with ourselves, please.”

Govt resorts to enlightenment

A Director at the Cross River State Ministry of Social Welfare, Mrs Agnes Ikpe, said the high potency of the drink often drives its consumers to crime and also has devastating effect on the human body, which are the reasons that prompted the Cross River State Government to prohibit it in 2010. She said: ”The law in their warped estimation has no muscle to deter them from consuming the dangerous drink and we cannot clamp everybody into jail. “So we are doing more of enlightenment to stop people from taking the stuff.”