While 2023 was at its deathbed, the late Professor Dora Akunyili came alive. She became a topic on the social media as Nigerians relived her times in our national life. She was remembered and eulogised more for what she did as the Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) than as a member of the Federal Executive Council (FEC). She was Nigeria’s minister of information who boldly spoke up when the issue of the ailment of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua left Nigeria in a dangerous conundrum. Nigerians went in one direction to point to the disturbing fact that fake and substandard consumable products have filled our markets and our bellies. Generally, it is agreed that when Akunyili was in charge of that aspect of our national life, we didn’t have it so bad. She battled so very hard against various forces at home and abroad and successfully made Nigeria a positive reference in the international regulations community.
Now, faking of those essential commodities under the purview of NAFDAC has returned in bigger dimensions and has filled our head to a point where Nigerians themselves have raised the alarm. They are worried, they are sad, they are confused and more importantly, they are helpless. We are helpless because if we choose to ignore drinking, we may not be able to ignore medicines. And the alarm, even from NAFDAC itself, is sounding on nearly all things food, medical products, cosmetics, alcoholic liqueur and fizzy drinks. The current situation of NAFDAC is a clear case of Aisedede araye nii mu ni ranti ara orun – The inadequacies of the living remind the community of the dead good leader.
NAFDAC recently embarked on a sensitisation of states in the North Central region on “the negative effects of unwholesome food, fake medical products, harmful cosmetics, poor water and other substandard products.” This is the soft side of the work of NAFDAC. Gather people from everywhere, sit them in a hall according to their statuses and speak all manners of English grammar and registers to them on what NAFDAC is doing and what they should avoid. Afterwards, everyone retries to their activities and the cycle of what you were trying to dissuade them from continues. Current Director-General of NAFDAC, Professor Moji Adeyeye, represented by Bolaji Abayomi, said on the occasion that “dissemination of safety information on food and drugs is an important is an important aspect of the agency’s regulatory work.” Some Nigerians use kerosene tanker to transport edible oil, he noted and also decried the use of dyes in palm oil and bromate in baking, and why these should stop.
That is easier than going after counterfeiters because they are armed, ready and dangerous. Prof Adeyeye says they operate like a cartel while the South-East director of NAFDAC, Martins Iluyomade, said they’re “worse than Boko Haram.” They have backers and godfathers, they know people in the police and armed forces; they know powerful men and women in government. Iluyomade was awed by the extent of faking he saw at Cemetery Road Market in Aba, Abia State. He said 240 shops were used for illegal manufacturing of fake consumables there, and that four trailers could not move what he saw in that market. That is why those fakers could boldly target Dora Akunyili and actually shot her to kill her.
She survived the gun attack but eventually succumbed to cancer. Her son, Edozie Akunyili thinks his mother died for Nigeria in vain and he has his reasons for holding that thought. He also thinks his father, who was shot brutally in the streets of Idemili, died for Nigeria in vain. Edozie also thinks that corruption and impunity are winning in the country and that the sacrifices of his parents might not worth the while. “Nobody has sacrificed more for Nigeria than our family and we constantly ask ourselves if it was worth it.” That was the lamentation of Edozie Akunyili. You cannot tell the bereaved how not to mourn, you can only try to help him rein in his emotions and his loincloth. Perhaps, Edozie will see that his mother was the issue and the positive example in the whole trend. This makes Dora a hero. Heroes don’t die in vain.
Should we lament evil Nigerians and their foreign collaborators? By their antics, they seem to outnumber and easily outwit the good ones. Government anticipated such people and came up with NAFDAC that would help keep such evil doers in check and bring them to book. For some years, even the NAFDAC was drowned in the overwhelming irregularities in the society until a certain Dora Akunyili took charge. Now, we have gone back to the pre-Akunyili era. Should we then heap our cries at the doorstep of a wilted NAFDAC? Going by published reports, opinions and commentaries, NAFDAC appears obviously overwhelmed. The agency has lost that verve and fearsome aura of the Akunyili era.
Nigeria happened to NAFDAC. The agency is a victim of Nigeria where individuals are larger than state institutions. Individuals commit crimes, live in their heinous world and flaunt their crimes in our faces. Consequences are rare. Criminals in high places with godfathers in high places are part of the ruling elite. Otherwise, the world remembers that NAFDAC was in the vanguard of Nigerian agencies that received global accolades for hard work and integrity. Where has all that gone? Some say Professor Moji Adeyeye lacks the kind of energy required for the task in NAFDAC. They might be right.
While we disparage NAFDAC, it is pertinent to also ask where is the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON)? Does that agency still exist? If SON is the statutory body saddled with the responsibility of standardising and regulating the quality of “all products in Nigeria” why are we calling out only NAFDAC? One of the mandates of SON is to certify products in the country, and there doesn’t seem to be any form of certification going by the quantity of substandard product in circulation in Nigeria. The lax in SON dwarfs that in NAFDAC.
The fall in our standards is caused by government’s drive for pecuniary advancement. The sad equation of Nigeria with fake products might be as a result of how government has positioned itself and these agencies. So often and common do we measure the success or otherwise of Nigeria’s institutional agencies by how much revenue they offload in the strong room of government. To cut NAFDAC some slack, we can say its ‘hands are tied’. It’s possible that the hawks in government have gone with cap in hand to ask NAFDAC ‘wetin you chop remain’. It’s not impossible that when NAFDAC and other such agencies try to act accordingly, the economic dictates would have a stronger pull. It pulls NAFDAC from exerting proper regulation and even drifts it from proper oversight.
Our ‘how much has your agency generated?’ government cannot be absolved from blames. To start a small business, many strict hurdles and high fees line all the way. Banks too are not free of the blames as they charge in very complicated and corrupt ways. These cumbersome processes simply spell EXPLOITATION! And this breeds corruption of the system. The system manned by people who are not above board themselves, will easily crumble. Personnel accede to slight overtures of the corrupt people and we all fall under the spell of fakers. The government shouldn’t aid and abet what is going on against NAFDAC, but it is implicitly doing this.
Who or what should we then lament? The death of Akunyili? The lax of NAFDAC and SON? The government rabidly fixated on revenue? Or, should we lament the Nigerian who, by all means struggles very hard to subvert the system? At our various levels, we are our own worst enemies – and our enemies are mutating rapidly.
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
and then