The Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee on the Elimination of Drug Abuse, Brig. Gen. Buba Marwa, (retd), on Wednesday, sought an urgent intervention of the National Agency for Foods and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) against the proliferation of hard drugs and drug abuse.
This was even as he warned that this is capable of wiping out two generations in the country if urgent steps were not taken to curb the menace.
Marwa stated this when the committee, paid a working visit to the director general, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Moji Adeyeye, in Abuja.
He said the visit was to enable the committee to engage with NAFDAC as it has done with some other key stakeholders while expressing confidence that the present administration is concerned and will effect changes rapidly to end the surge.
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Marwa also informed that the committee, by this weekend, will break into sub-committees that will visit zones to involve relevant stakeholders at the state level even as far as local government and communities levels and bring back their reports.
In her response, NAFDAC DG, Prof. Moji Adeyeye, said “this administration has taken it upon itself to eliminate the scourge of drug abuse in the country. However, we talk about eliminating drug abuse and we just leave it at talk because we are very good at talking but with Gen. Marwa, I am confident.”
She however blamed the scourge on the country’s porous borders and the withdrawal of NAFDAC from the port from 2011 to 2018, saying “when I joined NAFDAC about a year ago, I was focusing on substandard, falsified medicines that are destroying our people because of the porous borders that we have and because NAFDAC was removed from the port between 2011 and 2018.
“That resulted in the destruction of lives of our own children, the tramadol, codeine and all others. But thank God the trend has been reversed by returning NAFDAC to the port and since the return, there have been changes.”
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