Why There’s Influx of Fake, Substandard Drugs in Nigeria, Says NAFDAC

By Udora Orizu

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) yesterday said the reason behind the influx of fake, substandard and unregistered products in Nigeria is due to their inability to inspect most of the imported and exported goods, following the agency’s agents removal from the ports.

The Director-General of NAFDAC, Dr. Mojisola Adeyeye, disclosed this during the agency’s 2022 budget defence session with the House of Representatives Committee on Health-care Services.

According to her, “NAFDAC, which is supposed to be controlling and regulating what is imported and exported, was removed from the ports from 2011 to 2018.”

This, she alleged, led to the emergence of some cabals who are behind the influx of fake and substandard drugs into the country.

The agency boss said: “This is what we sleep and wake up with in terms of making sure that the health of our people is safe guarded. From 2011 to May 16, 2018, NAFDAC was removed from the ports, and we are supposed to be controlling and regulating what is imported and exported. For seven years, we were absent and cabals were formed. We cannot undo the cabals overnight. That is why it has been extremely challenging for the last three and half years. The federal task force is domicile in NAFDAC, and we are putting a lot of money on enforcement.

“We have a multi-prone approach to mitigate substandard and falsified medicines. Some of the ones that have NAFDAC numbers are falsified. For example, we gave NAFDAC number for three products and from a pharmacy outlet, we found out that a product was thickened and we had to go to the place. It is a medium size company and we found out that they have cloned our NAFDAC number from three products to seven products. That is how much we have to run after ourselves. But we have ten thousand drug products and about 80 to 90 percent of what you see is NAFDAC regulated, while some of them are not.”

Speaking further, Adeyeye lamented that the agency needed to increase its personnel to guard the borders and help to combat drug trafficking.

She said: “Let us look at our porous borders; we are surrounded by six countries and there is no guard in terms of regulation of the border. We need more staff members. We have 2,118 members of staff now, and we need more workers at the borders, as we do not have sufficient men and women to guard our borders.”