Lagos Commissioner Laments Nigeria’s Over-dependence On Imported Drugs

Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, has lamented the Nigeria’s overdependence on imported drugs, saying that the State government was prepared to assist pharmaceutical industries to produce drugs locally.

Speaking at Pharma West Africa Drug Exhibition held in Victoria Island, Lagos, tagged, “The global pharmaceutical industry is coming to Nigeria”, he said it was disheartening that out of the 100 per cent drugs consumed in Nigeria, 80 to 90 per cent of the drugs were being imported, while the remaining five per cent were manufactured in Nigeria.

He maintained that Nigerians are good manufacturers of drugs, just as he charged local pharmacists to produce quality drugs that can pass the test for good quality.

“Pharmaceutical economy data is important to us, we import 80 to 90 per cent of the drugs we use in Nigeria. We manufactured just five per cent. I want to reckon with the fact that since we are good manufacturer of drugs, and when we finish the product, we should subject them to thorough scrutiny.

“Nigeria, in particular Lagos has to be the big place for manufacturing of drugs, we are talking of investing more on manufacturing of drugs and create an enabling environment that can attract big pharmaceutical manufacturers,” Prof. Abayomi stated.

Speaking at the event, the Director-General of the National Food, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, said that in the 1980s, the missionaries did buy drugs from Nigeria when returning to their countries, because of the high quality of drugs produced in the country then.

She noted that then, all the regulatory agencies were allowed to function as expected of them, but now the regulatory agencies have been made impotent.

She noted that NAFDAC on its own is doing its best to checkmate low quality and fake drugs in the country.

She also lamented that some government organisations gave room for things to get worse.

Professor Adeyeye noted that it was shocking that NAFDAC and some other agencies that prevent importation of substandard goods and drugs in the country were removed from the seaaports between 2011 to 2018, which created avenue for people to import all kinds of substandard drugs into the country.

She noted that it was a collective resolution to return the dignity in the pharmaceutical industry by producing high-quality products.

She said drug manufacturers should become more customers-focussed and regulatory agencies-minded.

“I challenged the pharmaceutical industry, why do we import medicines we can manufacture. The number of pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria has increased from 165 to 180 companies, we don’t want mediocrity, we want quality,” Professor Adeyeye said.

For his part, the president of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), Prof. Cyril O. Usifo, said there was the need for pharmacists and non-pharmacists to work together and if there is opportunity to bring about leveraging new frontiers in the pharmaceutical sector.

Others that spoke at the event included Dr. Ngono Mballa Rose, director-general Lanacome, Cameroun; James Kommeh, head of Pharmacy Board in Sierra Leone, and Dr Pamella Ajayi, president, Health Care Federation of Nigeria. They said there should be a commitment in advancing and bringing innovation into the pharmaceutical industry and to improve the healthcare services in West Africa.

According to the organisers of the event, Jamie Hill of B and B Event, the essence of the workshop was to create opportunities for manufacturers and encourage them to come and set up businesses in Nigeria.

Some of the pharmaceutical companies that participated in the exhibition said they were looking forward to setting up manufacturing plants in Nigeria because the country was a ready market for their products.