Nigeria actually needs more than one NAFDAC. The entire country is brimming with fake, adulterated, substandard, and dangerous medicines. There are merchants of death everywhere. And they have collaborators and enablers deep inside government. So the blood money goes round. Vendors of killer drugs do not deserve pity and should never be defended under any guise. The same fate, however, should apply to their enablers wherever they may be found.
But NAFDAC should not be allowed to get away with murder in the name of being tough. What it did in ‘ogbo ogwu’ in Onitsha, Anambra state, and similar markets in Lagos and elsewhere in the country, was unconscionable, wrong and illegal. Blanket or collective punishment is not acceptable notwithstanding the severity of the alleged offence by the medicine sellers. NAFDAC cannot shut down a section of a market housing between 3000-5000 shops, in the case of Onitsha, for months without end thereby punishing the guilty and the innocent among the traders. By so doing, that agency was also punishing dependents of the innocent traders. Sadly, in our clime between seven and 10 persons depend on one gainfully employed or engaged Nigerian. Imagine the effects of NAFDAC’s callous action. And now to think that the agency has been accused of extortion and regulatory Terrorism. NAFDAC can, and should, do better. It’s not a revenue-generating and should not act like one.
https://thesun.ng/nafdac-onitsha-and-an-agencys-terrorism/
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