Pharmacists Decry Incessant Attack on Members’ Premises

Pharmacists Decry Incessant Attack on Members’ Premises

The Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) has called on the Inspector General of Police (IG), Mohammed Adamu, to take urgent steps to stem the rising cases of deadly attack on pharmacy premises in the country.

The call was made by the ACPN, the umbrella body of registered Community Pharmacists in Nigeria (CPN), in the wake of the gruesome murder of the National Publicity Secretary of the association, Mr. Sunday Ike, in Abuja.

According to a statement jointly signed by the Chairman of ACPN, Sam Adekola, and National Secretary, Bose Idowu respectively, Ike was murdered on June 19, 2020, at his pharmacy premises, Suncell Pharmacy at 3rd Avenue, Gwarimpa, Abuja.

“Late Sunday Ike, a diligent and passionate community pharmacist, was on duty as a frontline health worker rendering pharmaceutical care services through vital interventionist measures calculated to save other people’s lives when agents of darkness cut short his promising life right in the precincts of his workplace,” the statement said.

ACPN, who decried the rising cases of attack and murder of pharmacists in Nigeria, expressed worries over “the waste of valuable human resource at a time the country continues to search for its best hands to salvage the remains of the country economically, politically and socio-culturally.

“The Nigeria Police Force, Department of State Security

(DSS) and other arms of law enforcement agencies should as a matter of urgency note the ugly and disturbing trend, and initiate action to end it.”

The professional body is disturbed that criminal elements assume that community pharmacists and other health facilities are gold mines, and appealed to the IG to set up special police squads to ensure a more robust surveillance of pharmacies and other health facilities across the country.

Citing the murder of some its members by criminals and physical harassment of pharmacists on their duty posts across the country, ACPN alleged that some of the incidents were not successfully resolved by the Nigeria Police. It called on President Muhammadu Buhari to direct the IG to ensure that the killers of Ike were brought to book.

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