The South-East Zonal Director of the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Martins Iluyomade, has raised alarm over mind-boggling manufacture and sale of fake and expired drugs in popular “Ogbo Ogu Market, otherwise, known as, “Head-bridge Drug Market, Onitsha, Anambra state.
Iluyomade raised the alarm after he and his team members stormed the drug market in the early hours of Monday around 4am accompanied by heavily armed security operatives drawn from the military and the Nigeria Police Force.
At the market, the NAFDAC officials broke into different drug sales shops and warehouses where they brought out fake, substandard and expired drugs concealed in cartons.
Also, the team made the shocking discovery of empty drug containers and packets, with names and addresses of local and foreign manufacturers, as well as NAFDAC numbers printed on them.
Also discovered were fake drugs allegedly manufactured by some of the traders waiting to be packaged in those containers and packets whose manufacturers already have the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN) registration.
While speaking to newsmen, Iluyomade said the discovery showed that most of the fake drugs being produced in the market were “very sensitive medicine that the people need. Some of the drugs are foreign manufactured drugs, and, are very expensive because of the Dollars exchange to Naira”.
He bemoaned that the contents that would eventually be packaged in these containers and packets would be fake products.
“You can’t guarantee what would be put in these containers and packets. This is why people are dying because the medicine they are buying is fake, some are substandard and expired” he lamented.
He stated that the raid was going on simultaneously in all major drug markets in the Southeast zone, adding that it was a national assignment discreetly planned for several months to ensure its success.
Iluyomade stated that NAFDAC had in the past involved the market’s leadership in carrying out the raid, but, said that the agency deliberately decided to toe a different path in the current exercise in a bid to save the latter from blackmail and attacks as experienced in the past from their co-traders after such exercise.
On how long the exercise will last, Iluyomade said;
“The enormity of the work is huge. I can’t say now how long it will take us to conclude, but, even if it will take us one year, we will continue because we want to sanitise this market of fake drugs to save the lives of Nigerians. NAFDAC has said it before, ‘Shine your eyes when you are buying medicines, but, now it shines the whole of your body.”
He said that all culprits would be made to face the law.