Maiduguri Now New Hub for Fake Drugs in West Africa, Says NAFDAC

Michael Olugbode in Maiduguri

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) tuesday decried the large volume of fake and adulterated drugs in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, insisting that the town has now become the hub of such drugs in the West African sub-region.

The agency raised the alarm during the raid of pharmaceutical stores in the troubled town.
Speaking to journalists after the sealing of 18 pharmaceutical shops in Gamboru area of the town, the Chief Legal Officer of the agency, Umar Shamaki, who alongside Waheed Agboola, the Chief Regulatory Officer led a team from Lagos on the clampdown, said: “It is quite unfortunate that Maiduguri has now become the new hub of fake and adulterated drugs in the West African sub-region.”

He said every suburb of the town has drug wholesaling market where drugs sold are mainly fake and adulterated. He lamented that most of these drugs found their ways into neighbouring Cameroun, Niger and Chad and by extension some Central African countries.

He said: “As a responsible agency, NAFDAC, owes it as a duty to the nation and her neighbours to ensure that fake and adulterated drugs do not get funneled through Nigeria.”

He explained that the growth of the market for fake and adulterated drugs was as a result of the prolonged Boko Haram crisis in the North East state which made it is almost impossible to check the explosion.
He however, insisted that with the improved security, the agency would ensure that it was on top of its game by clamping down on all dealers of fake and adulterated drugs.

He said: “NAFDAC is not out to clampdown on the wholesalers alone but will go to the root of this illegal trade by smoking out the importers and manufacturers.”