NAFDAC seals 18 drug stores in Maiduguri

THE National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), on Tuesday, sealed off eighteen drug stores in Maiduguri, Borno State.

The agency equally decried the large volume of fake and adulterated drugs in circulation, stressing that the city had become the hub of counterfeit drugs in the West African subregion.

Speaking with newsmen during a raid, Chief Legal Officer of the agency, Umar Shamaki who, alongside Waheed Agboola, the Chief Regulatory Officer led a team to carry out the operations regretted the unfortunate development.

According to Shamaki who spoke on behalf of the team, “every suburb of the town has wholesale markets where drugs being sold are mainly fake and adulterated and people consume them unknowingly.

He lamented that most of these drugs found their ways into neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad and by extension some Central African countries thereby wasting people’s lives.

Shamaki added that: “As a responsible agency, NAFDAC, owes it a duty to the nation and her neighbours to ensure that adulterated drugs do not get channeled through Nigeria.”

He explained that the growth of  fake drugs market was as a result of the prolonged Boko Haram crisis in the North East states which made it almost impossible to check the explosion of fake drugs.

Shamaki,  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  adulterated drugs.

“NAFDAC is not out to clampdown on the wholesalers alone but will get to the roots of this illegal trade by dealing with the importers and manufacturers of these dangerous products.”

Fake drugs have killed several patients in the State specialist hospital especially during this period of insurgency.