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Akpeteshie is a liquor produced by distillation palm wine or sugar cane, primarily in the region of West Africa. It is the national spirit of Ghana. In Nigeria it is known as Ògógóró (Ogog'), an Urhobo word, usually distilled locally from fermented Raffia palm, where it is known as the country's homebrewing.Simon Heap (2008) '“Those that are Cooking the Gins”: The Business of Ogogoro in Nigeria’, Contemporary Drug Problems, 35(4): 573-610. Today, there is a misconception that Ogogoro can be pure ethanol, but traditionally, it had to come from the palm tree and then be distilled from this source.
It is popular throughout West Africa, and goes by many names including apio, ogoglo, ogogoro ( Ogog ), VC10, Kill Me Quick , Efie Nipa, Kele, Kumepreko, Anferewoase, Apiatiti, Home Boy, Nana Drobo, One Touch ' among others. It is also known as sapele water, kparaga, kai-kai, Sun gbalaja, egun inu igo meaning The Masquerade in the Bottle , push-me-push-you, and/or crim-kena, sonsé ("do you do it?" in Yoruba language). In the Igbo language it is known as . Other Nigerian epithets include: , Urhobo people, as well OHMS (Our Home Made Stuff), Iced Water , Push Me, I Push You and Craze man in the bottle''.Heap (2008) ' Calabar, Abeokuta, Ilesha, (white man is not smarter), , Nigerian Pidgin, Ijaw people, and Edo people and ,“Those that are Cooking the Gins”, 599-600. Ghanaian moonshine is referred to as akpeteshie.
With British colonization of what became known as the Gold Coast, such local brewing was outlawed in the early 1930s. According to a 1996 interview with S.S. Dotse about his life under British colonial rule: "Our contention was that the drink the white man brought is the same as ours. The white men's contention was that ours was too strong...Before the white men came we were using akpeteshie. But when they came they banned it, probably because they wanted to make sales on their own liquor. And so we were calling it kpótomenui. When you had a visitor whom you knew very well, then you ordered that kpótomenui be brought. This is akpeteshie, but it was never referred to by name."
The name "akpeteshie" was given to the drink with its prohibition: the word comes from the Ga language ( ape te shie, the act of hiding) spoken in greater Accra and means they are hiding, referring to the secretive way in which non-European inhabitants were forced to consume the beverage. Despite being outlawed, illicit spirits remained commonplace, with reports that even schoolboys were able to easily obtain akpeteshie through the 1930s. Demand for akpeteshie and the profits to be made from its sale was enough to encourage the spread of sugar cane cultivation in the Anlo region of Ghana.
Distillation was legalized with decolonization and Ghanaian independence. The first factory was established in the Volta Region, taking advantage of the area's supply of sugar cane plantations.
The potency of the liquor heavily affects the bodily senses, providing a feeling likened to that of a knockout punch. Practiced drinkers can be seen acknowledging receipt by blowing out air or pounding their chest.
The economic facets of ogogoro have been equally salient throughout recent Nigerian history. Many poor Nigerian families homebrew the drink as a means of economic subsistence, many of whom sell shots of it on city street corners. The criminalization of ogogoro which occurred under the colonial regime is also believed to have been largely economic; while the public justifications for the law regarded public health and Christian beliefs regarding alcohol, it has been argued that colonial officials were also seeking to suppress local economic activity which might draw money or labor away from the colonial system.
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