Director-General of the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, has urged the Judiciary to come harder on those found guilty of making and selling fake products.
She said this would help the agency and the government to rid the country of counterfeited and expired medicines, cosmetics, and spurious food products.
A statement on Sunday in Abuja by NAFDAC’s Resident Media Consultant, Sayo Akintola, said Adeyeye regretted that perpetrators of the illicit trade often capitalise on the weak laws in the land to wreak havoc on the nation’s health system.
The NAFDAC boss said the agency, in the last five months, seized and destroyed unwholesome products valued at over N5 billion.
The products, she said, include drugs, such as antibiotics, antihypertensive, antimalarial, herbal remedies, psychoactive, controlled substances.
Adeyeye also listed the foods the agency destroyed as spaghetti, vegetable oil, non-alcoholic beverages, sachet water, chocolates, noodles, as well as cosmetics, such as creams, pomade and insecticides, among others.
Pleading with the National Assembly to pass the Counterfeit Medical Products Bill that will reinforce NAFDAC’s fight against counterfeiting in Nigeria, the agency boss explained that dangerous businesses would be made unattractive if they carried maximum penalties for offenders.
