Fake Drugs: NAFDAC takes over Ariaria drug market in Aba

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on Monday took over the Ariaria International Market, Aba, after uncovering huge quantities of unregistered and banned drugs.

Omoyeni Babatunde, the NAFDAC deputy director in charge of Enforcement and Federal Task Force, South-South/South-East, announced the takeover in an interview with reporters during the enforcement.

Mr Babatunde said the agency confiscated the unregistered and banned medicines at the Patent Medicine Section of the market.

He said: “Today, people are not in the market. We have taken over and we have been working from shop to shop but no arrest has been made yet,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that some of the items uncovered in one of the shops included a substance suspected to be the dreaded Crystal Methamphetamine (Mkpuru Mmiri).

The substance was wrapped like a cigarette with foils, bearing Epsom Salt, and hidden away in small cartons with Epsom Salt labels and packed behind doors.

“We have been here at Ariaria since morning and pressmen have covered practically everything we have done here.

“What we have seen here is mind-boggling.

“We have seen Analgin Injection, Gentamicin 280mg all of which have long been banned by the agency,” he said.

Mr Babatunde also said that some of the confiscated drugs had no NAFDAC registration number, hence not supposed to be sold in patent medicine shops.

He said the enforcement in the market was a national assignment coordinated by the NAFDAC Zonal Director, Martins Iluyomade.

He said the scope of the assignment at Ariaria was to uncover unregistered products in the market.

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Mr Babatunde said that the assignment in Aba area was segmented into three locations and being executed simultaneously.

He also said the screening was the result of intelligence from inter-agency collaboration, involving the State Security Service, police, Nigerian Army, and NAFDAC.

He said that any product in the market without NAFDAC number had not passed through NAFDAC’s processes and not qualified to be on sale.

“If you go through NAFDAC’S mandate critically, you will see that the agency is empowered to enter any premises by force, if need be, when we reasonably suspect contravention of NAFDAC statutory regulations.

“We have to screen the entire shops because that is the scope we were given and we are being meticulous about it.

“So, one shop after the other, we are going to carry out the operation to the letter,” he said.

He said that the agency could only attach figures to the confiscated medicines at the end of the enforcement.