Sir: The National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration (NAFDAC) has recently been in the news for wrong reasons. The agency, established in October 1992 by the Ibrahim Babangida administration, is responsible for regulating and controlling the manufacture, importation, exportation, advertisement, distribution, sale and use of drugs, cosmetics, chemicals, packaged water and other regulated health products. NAFDAC aims to protect and promote public health by ensuring the quality and safety of these products.
 
The agency made its most effective national impact under the leadership of the late Prof. Dora Akunyili, who served as its Director General between 2001 and 2009, during the Presidents Obasanjo and Yar’Adua administrations. This was when the agency aggressively carried out public enlightenment campaigns on the dangers of fake, expired and adulterated drugs to health and publicly destroyed such unwholesome medicines.
 
There is no doubt that the duties of the agency are very critical to the good health and wellbeing of Nigerians as the dangers of fake, adulterated and expired drugs to the lifespan of Nigerians cannot be overemphasised. However, in undertaking its assignment, NAFDAC has to operate under the laws of Nigeria.
 
A few months ago NAFDAC closed down the popular drugs market in Onitsha, Anambra State, for three months. Reason: Some of the traders were engaged in the sale of unwholesome, fake and adulterated drugs. Instead of separating the wheat from the chaff by separating the genuine drugs from the adulterated ones and punishing the identified culprits, the entire traders were made to suffer. Genuine businessmen, who depend on the sales of the drugs to pay their rents, feed their families, pay their children’s school fees and settle other family bills were left desolate, in hunger and penury for those three months.
 
The latest in these continuing acts of arbitrariness is the invasion of the Balogun Business Associates (BBA) premises in Lagos, by NAFDAC officials. Since Saturday, August 2, 2025, officials of the agency have been breaking into the shops and warehouses, carting away their goods and conveying them to God knows where.

This action is at best inhuman and discriminatory. One is constrained to ask what crime a law abiding citizen, fulfilling his civic duties to the government and carrying out his lawful duties at the Trade Fair Complex has committed to witness these acts of injustice and intimidation.
 
Our legal system abhors arbitrariness and reckless use of power. You cannot because you are authorised to control the use of wholesome food and genuine drugs manufacturing and distribution in the country embark on unlawful seizure of goods of businessmen. The danger of allowing NAFDAC personnel free rein in their illegal acts is that they destroy the businesses of the affected businessmen and throw them into the unemployment market.

The President should order NAFDAC to immediately stop these unconstitutional and unlawful actions of NAFDAC officials. One also wonders if the present Director General of the agency, Prof. Moji Adeyeye, is aware of these actions of her officers causing serious embarrassment to members of the public. If she is not aware, this writer humbly calls her attention to these anomalies.

So far, she has led the agency very successfully and effectively, leading to the renewal of her tenure. She should not allow the bad practices of her overzealous officials to dent her good image.
Sam Ekpe wrote from Lagos.