Cover your face in shame for giving Coca-Cola clean bill of health, HURIWA tells minister

The Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, has been lambasted by a prominent civil group, Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA), for siding with Nigerian Bottling Company PLC against the interest of the consumers by rushing to certify sprite and fanta fit for consumption against global best practices.

HURIWA stated that both NAFDAC and the health ministry are guilty of criminal negligence by only embarking on spirited defence of the defaulting Nigerian bottling company only when a competent Court had returned an extensively damaging claims backed by unassailable empirical evidence generated from a reputable laboratory in the United kingdom.

“When has the Health Ministry become an Appellate court to analyse and issue counter decisions different from the considered pronouncements of the competent court of law?” HURIWA asked.

HURIWA has also asked President Muhammadu Buhari to remove the Health minister and reorganse the National Agency for Drugs Administration and Control  (NAFDAC).

HURIWA said President Muhammadu Buhari needs to urgently bring in a proactively proficient team in the Public Health Sector that will fundamentally overhaul the style of supervision and investigation of the standards of manufacturing and supply of beverages and drugs to Nigerian consumers which for now has collapsed going by recent findings.

HURIWA cited example of the importation of egusi soup and ‘eba’ with NAFDAC’s registration numbers imported recently into Nigeria from India as showing how NAFDAC has colluded and compromised with evil suppliers of fake and substandard food beverages to flood the Nigerian markets.

“This Lagos High court’s verdict which disclosed that an international laboratory in the UK certified our fanta and sprite as unfit for human consumption should be the last straw that should break the back of entrenched incompetence and gross inefficiency in NAFDAC and Ministry of Health”, HURIWA affirmed.

Besides, the rights group praised Dr Emmanuel Fijabi Adebo and his firm for instituting the suit before the Lagos High court presided over by Justice Adedayo Oyebanji which resulted in the verdict that revealed that NAFDAC failed Nigerians by declaring as fit for human consumption, fanta and sprite products discovered by a test in the United kingdom as turning poisonous when mixed with ascorbic acid ( popularly known as Vitamin C).