The Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Agency Commission (NAFDAC), Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, was recently in the eye of the storm; when reports quoted her to have said 50 per cent of pharmaceutical products imported into the country were fake.
In an interview with Channels Sunrise Daily team on Wednesday, Prof. Adeyeye, among other issues, explained that she was reported out of context.
According to her; she had meant that 50 per cent of the certification was fake, and not the actual medicines as was widely reported.
The NAFDAC DG said, “What I said was that the products that could have come into Nigeria were stopped due to fake certification and documentation. We stopped those products from coming in through the pre-shipment testing before they left the countries where they were coming from.
“Probably it could have been misunderstood. What we have in NAFDAC now is the pre-shipment testing. Let’s say we approve 100 products to be imported. Those products must go through our clean report inspection analyst, TRIA. And those that failed would not come. This was what I meant.”
In response to non-arrest of drug barons, Adeyeye noted, “Unfortunately, we do not catch the barons but the foot soldiers. It is just once in a while that we arrest the big guys, and whenever we do; we prosecute them. NAFDAC has a team of investigation and enforcement team.
“Also, the Federal task force is domiciled in NAFDAC. But in terms of food and drugs; we have a lot of challenges in that area- first because of our population, and because of the countries around our borders. But what we do is what you call market control, a module for which we benchmark the products.”
