South-East zonal director of the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dr Martins Iluyomade, has raised the alarm over the mind-boggling manufacture, and sale of fake and expired drugs in the popular “Ogbo Ogu Market,” otherwise known as, “Head-bridge Drug Market,” Onitsha, Anambra State.
Accompanied by heavy security including armoured military tank, soldiers and police operatives, armed to the teeth, the South East zone NAFDAC boss and a team of his officials, stormed the drug market around 4am on Monday.
At the market, the NAFDAC officials armed with a heavy and sharp padlock key-cutter broke into different drug sales shops and warehouses bringing out cartons of fake, substandard and expired drugs concealed in cartons.
Also, stunning was discovery of empty drug containers and packets, with names and addresses of local and foreign manufacturers printed on them, including NAFDAC numbers.
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. The fake drugs containers and packets also had on them fake NAFDAC registration numbers.
Briefing newsmen at the drug market about the discoveries, the NAFDAC South East boss warned that the drug market posed grave danger to the lives of unsuspecting patients.
He stated that the discovery showed that the most faked drugs were “very, 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 said.
Pointing at various empty containers and medicine packets already carrying names of different medicines and the respective registered manufacturers, including their addresses, as well as NAFDAC numbers, Dr. Iluyomade bemoaned that what would eventually be packaged in the containers and packets would be fake.
“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 are fake, some are substandard and expired”.
He stated that the raid was going on simultaneously in all major drug markets in the South East zone, adding that it was a national assignment discreetly planned for several months to make sure success was achieved.
He stated that NAFDAC had in the past involved the market’s leadership in carrying out the raid, but, said that the agency deliberately decided not to involve the leadership in the current exercise so as to save the latter from blackmail and attacks they experienced in the past in the hands of their co-traders after such exercise.
The NAFDAC boss stated that the current exercise might not end soon because according to him “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 is shine the whole of your body”.
He said that all culprits would be made to face the law.
Meanwhile, when contacted, the chairman of the drug market, Mr Chukwuleta Ndubuisi, said that he would not say anything about the exercise until he got details of the raid.
