The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has said that the Indomie brand of noodles made in Nigeria have nothing to do with the noodles variant produced in Taiwan and Malaysia.
The regulator also said that other brands of noodles made locally in Nigeria are safe for consumption. The Director-General of NAFDAC, Mojisola Adeyeye, made the clarifications during a programme on Arise TV last Thursday night that foreign noodles remain prohibited from being brought into the country by the Federal Government.
She said the ban has been in place for many years and remains on the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) import prohibition list to encourage local production of noodles and backward integration of the economy.
NAFDAC also said it was working to ensure that foreign-made noodles are not smuggled into the country.
It disclosed that its Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (FSAN) organisation has commenced post-marketing surveillance (PMS) all over the country and the Food Lab Services Directorate has also been activated on the issue.
The Group Corporate Communications and event manager, Dufil Prima Foods Plc, Tope Ashiwaju, also clarified that Indomie Nigeria is a different and separate entity from Indomie Taiwan and Indomie Malaysia.
He added that Indomie Noodles is locally produced in the country and operations have been ongoing for at least three decades. He added that the company has improved local capacity utilisation to aid and enhance production to meet market demand, adding that it does not rely on importation to produce the noodles sold and eaten in Nigeria.
“Nigeria is a major consumer of instant noodles with the World Instant Noodles Association (WINA) placing the country as one of the largest consumers of instant noodles worldwide.
“The ban on the importation of instant noodles is not a recent development as instant noodles have been on the import prohibition list for years and we have not gone against this,” he said.
