By Kolawole Ojebisi
In a bid to stem the rising tide of substandard medicine in Nigeria, the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has proposed capital punishment for fake drug peddlers.
The agency stressed that it has become evident that only stiff penalties will deter peddlers of fake drugs from inhuman action that leads to children’s deaths.
NAFDAC’s Director General, Mojisola Adeyeye, said this when she appeared on Friday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.
“Somebody bought children’s medicine for N13,000 or something like that; another person was selling about N3,000 in the same mall.
“That raised an alarm. Guess what? There was nothing inside that medicine when we tested it in our Kaduna lab. So, I want the death penalty.
“Because you don’t need to put a gun on the head of a child before you kill that child. Just give that child bad medicine,” she asserted.
To implement strict measures that will deter drug peddlers, Adeyeye said the agency is open to collaboration with the judiciary and the National Assembly.
“You cannot fight substandard, falsified medicine in isolation. The agency can do as much as it can, but if there is no deterrent, there’s going to be a problem,” she said.
“Somebody brought in 225mg of Tramadol that can kill anybody, fry the brain and you give a judgment of five years in prison or N250,000. Who doesn’t know that that person will go to the ATM and get N250,000?
“That is part of our problem. No strict measures deter [people] from repeating the same thing. We can do as much as we can but if our law is not strong enough, or the judiciary is not strong enough to stand up, we’re going to have a problem.
“So, our judiciary system must be strong enough. But we are working with the National Assembly to make our penalties stiff. But if you kill a child by bad medicine, you deserve to die,” she said.
She maintained that the agency is constrained by limited funding and staff shortage.
According to her, the agency has about 2,000 staff members nationwide.
