NAFDAC Number Format Explained: What A4, B4, A11, 04 and an L Ending Mean

Every number in the register has the same skeleton: a series code, a hyphen, a run of digits. The series code is one letter and one or two digits (A4, B4, C4, A3, A6, A11, A10) or, in the older series, two bare digits (04, 03). The run after the hyphen is four digits in the older numbers and six digits in the newer ones, and every six-digit number in our copy begins with 10, so A4-100160 and A11-100249 are newer allocations while A4-5180 and B4-4875 are older ones.

Of the 11,704 medicine and device records in our copy, 6,500 are the letter-digit-hyphen-four-digits shape, 2,163 are letter-digit-hyphen-six-digits, 1,748 start with two bare digits, and 1,256 carry a two-digit series such as A11 or A10. Just 19 end in a letter. That last figure is the important one: a letter ending on a medicines number is rare enough that, when you see one, you are almost certainly looking at a listing rather than a registration, which the section on the L ending explains.

Practical reading rule: if the code you have does not fit 'short prefix, hyphen, four to six digits', stop and check what you have copied. A 12 or 13 digit string is the barcode. A code with a slash in it, like 3/4/2019, is a date. Neither will match anything, and neither says anything about the product.

Five series hold almost every registered medicine in the Greenbook, and between them they account for 10,205 of our 11,704 records. Here is what each one contains in our copy.

A4 (3,298 records) is the largest medicines series. 99% of its entries are classed as drugs. It is mostly imported products: 64% are made in India, 17% in Nigeria, 7% in China. Approval dates run from 2011 to 2026, so this series is still being issued. 68% of A4 registrations in our copy are Active.

B4 (3,149 records) is the second medicines series and reads as an import series: 68% India, 12% China, only 5% Nigeria. It is older on average than A4, and it shows: 36% of B4 registrations in our copy are Expired. A B4 number is a genuine medicines number, but it is the series where you should look hardest at the status and the date.

04 (1,273 records) is the older numeric series, with approvals from 2012 onward and no letter in front. It is the one medicines series where Nigerian-made products are the biggest group, at 48%, with India at 24%. 50% of its registrations are Active and 26% Expired. If a pack shows a bare '04-' number, it is a medicine, and it is usually one that has been on the Nigerian market a long time.

C4 (1,244 records) is entirely drugs and heavily imported, 78% from India. It is also the series in the worst state: 50% of its registrations are Inactive and another 26% Expired, so only about 24% of C4 numbers are current. Approvals date from 2018. A C4 number found in the register is real, but the odds that it is still live are lower than for any other series, and that is worth knowing before you buy.

A11 (1,241 records) is the newest medicines series and the clearest pattern in the whole register: 99% of A11 products are manufactured in Nigeria, and approvals begin in 2018. Whatever NAFDAC's internal reason for the series, in practice an A11 number on a pack means a locally made medicine registered in the last eight years. 58% are Active.

What the register does not tell us: NAFDAC has not published why one imported medicine gets A4 and another gets B4 or C4. The country and date patterns above are strong, but they are patterns in the data, not a rule NAFDAC has stated. Treat them as a guide to what you are probably holding, and let the status and product name in the register be the verdict.

A3 (707 records) is medical devices, 100% of its entries: test kits, syringes, gloves, lubricants, thermometers. Approvals run from 2019 to 2025 and 93% are Active. Most A3 records carry no manufacturer country in the Greenbook, which is a quirk of how devices are entered, not a warning sign.

03 (476 records) is the older device series with no letter in front, and it is where you find the long-running diagnostic kits: rapid malaria tests, glucose strips and the like. Approvals date from 2012 and 77% are Active. A '03-' number and an 'A3-' number are the same kind of product a few years apart.

A6 (244 records) is where NAFDAC files vaccines and biologics (65% of the series) and a good share of veterinary products (30%). 94% are Active. If you are checking a vaccine or an insulin, this is the series you expect to see.

A10 (16 records) is veterinary, all of it, and A9 holds a handful more. These are small series and you will rarely meet them outside an animal-health supplier.

The practical point for a buyer: the number's series should match the product in your hand. A bottle of tablets with an A3 number, or a glucose test kit with an A4 number, is a mismatch worth asking about before any status check.

A NAFDAC number ending in L, such as A7-100870L, is a listing number, not a registration number. Listing is NAFDAC's lighter recognition for herbal medicines, traditional remedies and many supplements: a safety evaluation and a two-year permission to sell, not the full efficacy-and-safety registration that medicines go through. A listed product has not shown NAFDAC that it treats anything, and its listing forbids it from claiming to.

The numbers make the split plain. In our copy of the listed herbal products database, 1,580 of 1,591 listings begin with A7 and 1,397 end in L. In the medicines Greenbook, A7 holds just 25 records and only 19 numbers in the entire register end in a letter. So an L number searched in a medicines register will almost always come back empty, and that emptiness means 'wrong shelf', not 'fake'. It was the single largest reason for a failed lookup in our logs over the last three months.

Our checker searches the listed database whenever the medicines register misses, so an L number entered there returns the listing itself with its issue and expiry dates. What the listing cannot do is turn a supplement into a medicine. Our guide to listed versus registered herbal products explains how to read one.

One caution: a small number of listings in our copy do not end in L, and a small number of A7 numbers are registered medicines rather than listings. A7 is the strongest signal of a herbal or nutraceutical product, and the L is the confirmation, but the database record is the final word.

NAFDAC regulates packaged food, table and sachet water, cosmetics, chemicals and detergents as well as medicines, and each of those has its own number series issued by a different directorate. None of them is in the Greenbook. In our copy, no medicines number begins with 01, 02, 05, 06, 07, 08 or 10, yet people type those series into our medicines checker every day: over a hundred lookups beginning 01 or 02 in the last three months alone.

A number from a tin of milk, a sachet of water or a tube of cream is a genuine NAFDAC number and a medicines checker cannot see it. That is not a fault in the number or the product. It is the wrong database. NAFDAC's food products database at nafdac.gov.ng is the place to look those up, and it also covers packaged water, which is registered as a food.

Our checker now says this explicitly. When a lookup uses a series prefix that has never appeared in the medicines register, it tells you so and points you to the food database rather than returning a bare 'no matching products'. Water is handled the same way: no brand of water has ever been in the Greenbook, so a water search gets the food-database answer directly.

Finding a number in the right register is half the check. Our copy of the Greenbook holds 6,658 Active registrations, 2,696 Expired and 2,350 Inactive, so more than four in ten numbers that genuinely exist are no longer current. NAFDAC registrations run for five years and lapse constantly, for reasons ranging from a renewal in the queue to a company that no longer exists. A lapsed registration on old stock is common. A product being freshly restocked years after its registration died is a red flag.

Then match the product, not just the number. Counterfeiters borrow real numbers from real medicines. A number that comes back registered to a different product name, strength or manufacturer than the pack in your hand is as damning as a number that comes back empty. The series tells you where to look, the status tells you whether it is live, and the product details tell you whether the pack is what it claims to be. All three, every time.

Medicines: A4, B4, C4, A11, 04. Check the NAFDAC Greenbook at greenbook.nafdac.gov.ng, or the checker below, which searches our dated copy and keeps expired and inactive records with their statuses so a lapsed number is reported as lapsed rather than missing.

Devices, vaccines, biologics, veterinary: A3, 03, A6, A10, A9. Also the Greenbook. Our copy includes all of them.

Listed herbal products and supplements: A7 ending in L. NAFDAC's listed herbal products database. Our checker searches a copy of it automatically when the medicines register misses.

Food, water, cosmetics, chemicals: 01, 02, 05, 08 and any other series that never appears above. NAFDAC's food products database at nafdac.gov.ng/food-products-database/.

Barcodes: 12 or 13 digits, no letters. No database. Find the shorter number printed near 'NAFDAC Reg. No.' on the pack and start again.

For anything decisive, such as a dispute with a supplier or a report to NAFDAC, the authority is NAFDAC and its live databases, not any third-party copy, ours included. Our copies are dated and refreshed monthly, and the date is printed on every result.