# NAFDAC Number Format Explained: What A4, B4, A11, 04 and an L Ending Mean - Source: https://ogbogwu.com/guides/nafdac-number-formats/ - Category: Verification - Last updated: 2026-09-16 The series code at the front of a NAFDAC number says what the product is and which database can confirm it. Each series decoded, counted from the register itself. ## Read a NAFDAC number in five seconds 1. A NAFDAC number is short: a series code (A4, B4, A11, 04), a hyphen, then four to six digits. A4-5180 and A11-100249 are real shapes. Nothing longer than that is a NAFDAC number. 2. A4, B4, C4, A11 and 04 are registered medicines. Check them in the NAFDAC Greenbook, or in the checker below, which searches our dated copy of it. 3. A3 and 03 are medical devices and test kits. A6 is vaccines, biologics and some veterinary products. A10 is veterinary. 4. A7 with an L on the end is a listed herbal product or supplement, not a registered medicine. Lighter status, separate database. Our checker searches a copy of that too. 5. 12 or 13 digits and no letters is the barcode under the black stripes. It is not a NAFDAC number at all. 6. A series like 01, 02, 05 or 08 never appears in the medicines register. Those are NAFDAC's food, water and cosmetics numbers. Check them in NAFDAC's food products database. ## Why the first two or three characters matter more than the rest People type a NAFDAC number into a checker, get 'not found', and conclude the product is fake. In our own logs, nearly two thirds of registration-number lookups over the last three months came back empty, and most of those were not fakes. They were numbers from the wrong register: a herbal listing typed into a medicines search, a food number, a barcode. The series code at the front of the number would have told the person, before they searched, which database to search. NAFDAC does not publish a public key to its number series, so this guide is built the other way round: from the numbers themselves. We hold a dated copy of the public NAFDAC Greenbook (11,704 records, taken 17 August 2026) and a copy of NAFDAC's listed herbal products database (1,591 listings). Counting what each series actually contains tells you what a number is far more reliably than folklore about what the letters stand for. Every figure below is from those two copies, and we say so where the register is silent. ## The shape of a NAFDAC number 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. ## A4, B4, C4, A11 and 04: the registered medicines series 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, 03, A6, A10: devices, vaccines, veterinary 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. ## A7 and the L ending: listed, not registered 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. ## 01, 02, 05, 08 and friends: food, water and cosmetics 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. ## The series says what it is. The status says whether it is current. 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. ## Which database to check, by series 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. ## Key takeaways - A NAFDAC number is a short series code, a hyphen and four to six digits. Anything longer is the barcode - A4, B4, C4, A11 and 04 are registered medicines and live in the Greenbook. A11 is almost entirely Nigerian-made, A4, B4 and C4 are mostly imported - A3 and 03 are medical devices, A6 is vaccines and biologics, A10 is veterinary. The series should match the product in your hand - An A7 number ending in L is a listed herbal product or supplement: a lighter NAFDAC status in a separate database, never a registered medicine - Series such as 01, 02, 05 and 08 are food, water and cosmetics. They are genuine NAFDAC numbers and no medicines checker will ever find them - More than four in ten numbers in the register are Expired or Inactive. Finding the number is not the same as finding it current - The number's product name must match the pack. A real number on the wrong product is a counterfeit signal ## FAQs ### What does A4 mean in a NAFDAC number? A4 is the largest series of registered medicines in the NAFDAC Greenbook. In our copy of the register it holds 3,298 products, 99% of them classed as drugs, mostly imported (64% made in India, 17% in Nigeria) and with approvals from 2011 to today. An A4 number belongs to a medicine and can be checked in the Greenbook. NAFDAC has not published what the letter and digit stand for. ### What is the difference between A4 and B4? Both are registered-medicine series in the Greenbook. In our copy, B4 is more heavily imported (68% India, 12% China, 5% Nigeria) and older on average, with 36% of its registrations Expired against 17% Inactive for A4. NAFDAC has not stated why a product is assigned one series rather than the other, so treat the difference as a pattern in the data. Either way, what matters is the status and whether the product name matches your pack. ### What does A11 mean on a NAFDAC number? A11 is the newest medicines series, with approvals starting in 2018, and in our copy 99% of its 1,241 products are manufactured in Nigeria. In practice an A11 number means a locally made medicine registered in the last eight years. It is checked in the Greenbook like any other medicines number. ### What does the L at the end of a NAFDAC number mean? The L marks a listed product, almost always a herbal medicine or a supplement, filed under the A7 series. Listing is NAFDAC's lighter, two-year recognition after a safety evaluation. It is not the full registration medicines receive, and a listed product may not claim to treat or cure anything. Listings are kept in a separate database from the medicines Greenbook, which is why an L number comes back empty from a medicines-only checker. Ours searches a copy of the listed database too. ### Is a 13-digit number a NAFDAC number? No. A 12 or 13 digit number with no letters is the EAN barcode printed under the black stripes for shop tills. No NAFDAC number is that long. The NAFDAC number is the short letter-and-digit code, such as A4-5180 or 04-4753, usually printed near the manufacturer's name and labelled 'NAFDAC Reg. No.'. ### Why does the NAFDAC number on my water, food or cream not show in the checker? Because food, packaged water, cosmetics and household chemicals are registered by different NAFDAC directorates with their own number series, typically beginning 01, 02, 05 or 08, and none of them is in the medicines Greenbook. The number is genuine NAFDAC; the checker is simply the wrong database. Look it up in NAFDAC's food products database at nafdac.gov.ng instead. ### Does NAFDAC publish what each number series means? Not that we have found. NAFDAC's public databases show the numbers but no key to the series. Everything in this guide is counted from our dated copies of the Greenbook and the listed herbal database, and where a pattern is strong we say so, and where NAFDAC has not stated a rule we say that too. ### If the series is right and the number exists, is the product genuine? Not yet. Three things have to hold: the number exists in the right register, its status is current, and the product name, strength and manufacturer in the record match the pack in your hand. In our copy more than four in ten existing registrations are Expired or Inactive, and counterfeiters routinely print a real number from a different product. The series gets you to the right database. The record does the rest.