Evans Medical Plc — Companies

Why it is on record

The oldest pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Nigeria — founded in 1954 as Glaxo Evans, indigenised as Evans Medical in 1980 and the first locally listed pharma on the NSE.

Record held

Oldest continuously operating pharmaceutical manufacturer in Nigeria.

Founders

Originally a subsidiary of Glaxo Laboratories (UK), reconstituted as Evans Medical (Nig) Ltd in 1980 under indigenous ownership led by Dr. C. O. Igwilo and later Mr. Babatunde Akande.

Headquarters

Isolo, Lagos; manufacturing at Agbara, Ogun State.

Lineage / corporate history

Glaxo Evans Ltd (1954) → Evans Medical (Nig) Ltd (1980, indigenised) → Evans Medical Plc (NSE-listed 1996).

Key dates

1954Incorporated as Glaxo Evans (Nigeria) Ltd, the local arm of UK pharma giant Glaxo Laboratories.
1980Indigenised under the second wave of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree; renamed Evans Medical.
1996Listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
2014WHO-prequalified for Zinc dispersible tablets — first Nigerian pharma to achieve WHO PQ for paediatric Zinc.
2022Delisted from NGX after years of financial distress; restructuring underway.

Deep dive

Evans Medical Plc is the institutional ancestor of Nigerian pharmaceutical manufacturing. Founded in 1954 as Glaxo Evans, it predates independence and is the only Nigerian pharma whose corporate continuity reaches into the colonial pharmaceutical industry. Its Agbara plant in Ogun State, commissioned in the 1980s, was for two decades the largest single pharma manufacturing facility in West Africa.

The 1980 indigenisation severed Glaxo's controlling stake and made Evans the first wholly Nigerian-owned pharmaceutical company of meaningful scale. The 1996 NSE listing extended that lineage into the capital markets. The company's WHO prequalification of zinc dispersible tablets in 2014 was a watershed: it was the first Nigerian pharma product to clear WHO's stringent regulatory threshold, opening procurement by UNICEF and the Global Fund.

Financial distress through the 2010s — overcapacity, FX exposure on imported APIs, and governance disputes — culminated in the 2022 NGX delisting. The company's survival, restructuring under new investors, and the fate of the Agbara plant are now the central questions of the Nigerian pharma manufacturing renaissance.