- Safiu Kehinde
The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Moji Adeyeye, has demanded death penalty for fake drug peddlers in Nigeria.
Affirming her support for the capital punishment against drug traffickers as proposed by the National Assembly, Adeyeye sought its extension to fake drug peddlers as she called of stricter measures against the crime.
The NAFDAC DG made the call while speaking on Channels TV’s Morning Show on Thursday.
She disclosed that the agency is working with the National Assembly over the capital punishment proposal as she harped on the impact of fake drugs on children.
“I want death penalty, because you don’t need to put a gun on the head of a child before you kill the child. Just give that child a bad medicine, he will just sleep away and die.
“Our judiciary system must be strong enough. We are working with the National Assembly to make our penalty very stiff. If you kill a child be medicine, you deserve to die!” Adeyeye said.
Defending her claim, the NAFDAC boss recounted how the agency’s effort to implement a coordinated wholesales centre for the drug as against the open market model was frustrated.
After recording eventual success in Kano, Adeyeye disclosed how fake drug was discovered within the market despite strict monitoring.
“We have open market in Nigeria- Kano, Aba, Onitsha, and Lagos. Before my time, there was a plan to remove the open market to what is called coordinated wholesales centre where NAFDAC, Police, and Pharmaceuticals of Nigeria will be there to monitor.
“Kano was the first I. The country to do that. They built this giant mall, Kanawa Coordinated Wholesales Centre. We had over 150 forces to move them because they refused to move. They took Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, our sister agency that regulate the practice aspect, to court for 10 years. The council couldn’t do anything because it was in court.
“Finally, we had this judge, Ameh Boda, who said enough is enough that they must go to the coordinated wholesales centre. Now that they were in the coordinated centre, we started monitoring.
“Somebody sold a children’s medicine for N13,000 or something like that. Another person was selling N33,000 in the same mall.
“That raised an alarm. Guess what? There was nothing inside that medicine when we tested it in our Kaduna lab” the NAFDAC boss disclosed.
Prior to her call for capital punishment , Adeyeye decried the leniency of the judiciary in tackling drug-related cases.
“You cannot fight substandard falsified medicine in isolation. The agency can do as much as they can. But if there is no deterrent, there is going to be a problem.
“Somebody brought 250 milligrams of tramadol that can kill anybody and you gave a judgement of five years in prison or N250,000 bail. Who doesn’t know that the person will go to the ATM and bring N250,000?
“That is part of our problem! There is no strict measures to deter 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 standup, we have a problem!” She said.