NAFDAC To Re-open Onitsha Market, Seizes 50 Truckloads Of Fake, Substandard Drugs

About a month after closing down the Onitsha Drug Market, popularly known as ‘Ogbo Ogu Market’, the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has reopened the market.

NAFDAC officials in charge of the South-East zone had closed the market following searches and discovery of fake and substandard drugs in the market.

The South-East zonal director of the regulatory agency, Mr Martins Iluyomade, announced the re-opening of the market on Thursday during a meeting with officials of the Anambra State government, officials of the drug market association as well as traders from the adjourning markets selling timbers, plumbing materials, among others.

Speaking on the findings of the agency in the markets, the NAFDAC South-East zonal director said: “It is saddening to see that we have people amongst us whose only way of making money is by destabilising the country and killing people.

“We have confiscated over 50 trailers of fake and substandard drugs. We have many still in warehouses in town and we are coming after them. The volume of narcotics we saw here is enough to destabilise any nation. There is a link between the circulation of narcotics and insecurity. Check any country that there is insecurity and breakdown of law and order, you will see that narcotics is in high supply.

“This is a sad story, the number of narcotics we have found here. The people dealing in it know the effect, but they are doing it because people say the sale of narcotics is more lucrative than cocaine.

“We have also seen people who deliberately go and bring substandard and fake drugs. People import tablets in nylon bags with no label and they will bring it here and put it in packs and put label on them for sale. We saw a lot of it. We saw medicines that had been banned as far back as 2007, but people are stocking it.

“Many of them were banned because they cause cancer, and new replacement produced, but people still stocked them. That is wickedness. Another category is unregistered drugs. The volume of those medicines are usually small on the counter, but has large cache of them in warehouses outside the market.”

Iluyomade said even some genuine drugs were stored in manners that they lost their efficacy and even become harmful, far before their expiration date.

“The storage of the drug is also a problem. There is no ventilation in all the packing stores we visited. Medicine are supposed to be kept under certain weather where they maintain their effectiveness. Medicines are chemicals and even those who sell registered original medicines have had them expired long before the expiry date.

Iluyomade said even though the market would be reopened from Friday, March 7, about 4,000 shops would, however, remained locked until their owners come to the agency and explain certain drugs found inside their shops.

Leaders of the market unions expressed happiness about the news to reopen the markets, while pledging to work with the agency to identify traders who deal in illegal drugs.

Chairman of the Plumbing Materials Market, Mr Chikodili Ejiofor, expressed shock about the quantity of drugs found in his market. He said: “I don’t deal in drugs, my market is for plumbing materials and I was shocked at the number of drugs found in my market. Tramadol, codeine and many others were all found in the market to my amazement.”

Also, Ogbogwu Market chairman, Mr Ndubuisi Chukwuleta, said: “Before now, we were trying to check fake drugs in our own capacity, but now that NAFDAC has come in, our duty is quite less. We will always report to you. We will tell neighbouring markets to put their ears on the ground and ensure that they help us. This suffering our members are into, only a few people caused it for us, but thank God you are here now.”

Anambra State government officials at the meeting, who is the Special Adviser to the Governor on Pharmaceuticals, Dr Nnadozie Godwin, and the Commissioner for Health, Dr Afam Obidike, both pledged the support of the state governor in cleansing the markets of fake drugs.

Obidike said: “Sanitising drug trade saves more lives than what hospitals save. The lives that NAFDAC has saved so far through this exercise is more than what hospitals saved. We thank the traders for cooperating with them the day they came because if it wasn’t so, maybe the outcome would not have been what we have seen today.”