The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says it will not rest on its oars, in its bid to control the use of drugs in Nigeria.
Director General of the agency, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, made the pronouncement on Wednesday, at a special briefing tagged ‘Meet the Press,’ organized by the Media Unit of the State House, Abuja.
This is sequel to the recent raid carried out by NAFDAC on three major drug markets in Abia, Anambra and Lagos States, where fake drugs worth over a trillion naira were seized through the combined effort of NAFDAC and security agencies.
She disclosed that the Governors of the States concerned were contacted by the National Security Adviser first, adding that the trade unions of the three markets were also notified of the planned raid.
She said: “The street value of what we have just found will be close to a trillion naira and it is just an estimate. It may be an underestimate for now, but when we finish the operation, we will have a good idea.”
Professor Adeyeye further disclosed that the drugs came into the country through the borders, as a result of wicked individuals that decided to import expired and fake drugs that are harmful to humans.
While calling for collaboration in the fight against harmful and expired drugs, the NAFDAC boss said: “These drugs are not spirits, they came into our country through borders and ports and I have often said that it takes a village to raise a child. It doesn’t take only NAFDAC and Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN) to ensure that we have sanity in our drug distribution and mitigate substandard, falsified medicines.
“This is part of the reasons why we now have strategic partnerships with the office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), the Customs and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), and even with our own sister agency; the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria and a product of this strategic partnership is what we are witnessing today. ”
The NAFDAC Director General said her agency will continue to beam its searchlight on criminals that are involved in illegal drug trade because illicit drugs play a key role in promoting terrorism.
“Tramadol was literally being rained on us as a country and at that point also was the peak of suicide bombing in Nigeria. What the National Security Adviser (NSA) found then was that they tested the tissue of some of these suicide bombers and found tramadol there. What illicit drugs do is to alter the personality of the user so their mind is completely altered,” she said.
Professor Adeyeye stated that as a way forward, the agency intends to put in place control mechanisms that will help address the menace.
“There is no country that has an open drug market like Nigeria in the whole world. These are markets where anybody can get any drug at any time. But as part of our own strengthening of the regulatory system, what we are doing now is just one aspect of the regulation.
“We are expected to have what is called market control. We started a journey of comparing ourselves with the best regulatory agencies in the world; what is called WHO global benchmarking, which has nine modules, one of them is market control. Meaning you are able to track the products that are coming into your country through the product’s life cycle, and you are in control of where they are.
“That is very important because of the lives of our people and also because of trade. There is what is also called WHO listed authority, meaning, regulatory authorities that the world can really depend on, and for us to get that, we have to show that we have market control of whatever we are doing.
“Market control is made up of regulatory inspection, enforcement, post marketing surveillance, laboratory services and pharmacovigilance,” the NAFDAC DG explained.
She noted that NAFDAC plans to strengthen regulatory oversight with market control measures and coordinated wholesale centres to enhance drug monitoring. #NAFDAC #FakeDrugs #Nigeria pic.twitter.com/8N4k7N2hsV
— Voice of Nigeria (@voiceofnigeria) February 26, 2025
She also said some state governments, in collaboration with NAFDAC, are ready to build coordinated wholesale centres (CWC) through Public Private Partnerships, which can be used to monitor the inflow and sales of drugs.
She said contrary to insinuations, the raid carried out on the drug markets in Aba, Onitsha and Lagos is not aimed at shutting down trade but was an enforcement measure aimed at saving lives.
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