Why the profession needs both enabling systems and the power built from within
The future of Pharmacy will depend not only on the authority, recognition and opportunities society gives pharmacists, but also on the competence, character and relevance pharmacists build for themselves. Nigeria needs both forms of empowerment if the profession is to deliver better health outcomes and help shape the future of healthcare.
The theme of the 2026 WORLD PHARMACISTS DAY, “Empowering Pharmacists for Healthier Futures”, invites a question that the profession must answer honestly: who empowers the pharmacist? Is it government, the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, universities, employers, patients or technology? Or does the pharmacist also bear responsibility for his or her own empowerment?
Empowerment is often understood as the granting of authority, freedom, confidence or strength to act. In Pharmacy, this has two inseparable dimensions. There is empowerment from without: the laws, policies, education, recognition, remuneration and working environment that enable pharmacists to practise effectively. There is also empowerment from within: the competence, character, confidence, innovation and capacity that pharmacists deliberately develop in themselves.
The future of Pharmacy will depend both on the opportunities society gives pharmacists and on the capacity pharmacists build to recognise, create and seize those opportunities. External empowerment creates opportunity; internal empowerment creates capacity. A profession that receives authority without developing the competence to use it will squander opportunity. Conversely, a profession that develops exceptional capacity while remaining structurally excluded will eventually become frustrated. Pharmacy needs both.
The world is changing and pharmacy must change with it
Healthcare is passing through one of the most consequential periods in its history. Artificial intelligence is transforming knowledge work. Digital health is changing how patients access information and care. Precision medicine is challenging the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to treatment. Populations are ageing, non-communicable diseases are increasing, antimicrobial resistance threatens medicines that once transformed human survival, and recurring supply-chain disruptions have reminded nations that medicine security is inseparable from national security.
Patients have changed as well. The patient of yesterday came to the healthcare professional primarily for information. Today’s patient may arrive after consulting Google, social media, an artificial intelligence platform, friends, an online pharmacy and perhaps an influencer. Knowledge remains fundamental, but possession of information alone can no longer be the pharmacist’s defining advantage.
That advantage must increasingly lie in judgement, interpretation, clinical reasoning, communication, ethical leadership, trust, and the ability to convert pharmaceutical knowledge into better outcomes for human beings. Technology can retrieve information, identify interactions, analyse vast amounts of data and automate routine processes. Healthcare, however, ultimately concerns a human being, not merely a medicine or a dataset.
The pharmacist of the future must therefore move beyond being predominantly a custodian of medicines to becoming a custodian of medication outcomes. This is not a rejection of the profession’s traditional responsibilities. It is their logical completion.
From dispensing medicines to delivering outcomes
For generations, pharmacy established its importance around medicines: their discovery, formulation, manufacture, procurement, storage, distribution and dispensing. These functions remain indispensable. Yet the question society increasingly asks is no longer simply, “Who supplied the medicine?” It is, “Did the medicine make the patient better?”
That apparently small change has enormous implications. The pharmacist must be concerned not only that the correct medicine reaches the correct patient, but also that it produces the best attainable outcome, at an affordable cost and with minimal harm. Did blood pressure improve? Was diabetes better controlled? Was an adverse drug reaction prevented? Was adherence improved? Was unnecessary hospitalisation avoided?
This moves pharmacy from a predominantly product-centred orientation towards an outcome-centred profession. Nigeria does not merely need more medicines; it needs better health outcomes from the medicines it already consumes. Pharmacists should be visible in prevention, primary healthcare, medication optimisation, chronic disease management, pharmacovigilance, public health, research, manufacturing, medicine security, policy and technology. Pharmaceutical expertise should be present wherever decisions about medicines and health outcomes are made.
The difficult question is whether pharmacists are adequately preparing for these roles or merely demanding recognition for them. Recognition without demonstrable value is fragile. Sustainable professional influence rests on evidence that patients, institutions and the health system perform better because pharmacists are involved.
Empowerment from without
There are legitimate external barriers to the advancement of Pharmacy, and they should not be minimised. A pharmacist cannot practise to the full extent of competence where laws and policies unnecessarily constrain professional practice. Pharmacists cannot maximise their contribution where reimbursement systems recognise products but fail to recognise cognitive and clinical services. They cannot fully contribute where multidisciplinary structures exclude pharmaceutical expertise from decisions in which it is indispensable. Young pharmacists cannot become globally competitive if their education remains disconnected from scientific, technological and practice change.
Government, regulators, universities, healthcare organisations, employers and professional bodies therefore have clear responsibilities. Nigeria needs progressive regulation, stronger pharmacy education, competency-based continuing professional development, appropriate recognition and remuneration for professional services, meaningful integration of pharmacists into primary healthcare and national health programmes, expanded collaborative-practice opportunities, and greater investment in research, innovation and local pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Professional recognition must also be matched by responsibility and accountability. Expanded authority is most defensible when the profession can demonstrate rigorous standards, ethical conduct and measurable benefits to patients. Advocacy remains necessary, but advocacy is strongest when it is supported by results.
There is, however, a danger: a profession can become so preoccupied with what others have failed to do for it that it stops asking what it has failed to do for itself. This is why empowerment from within is equally important.
Empowerment from within
Some doors must be opened for pharmacists, but some doors will open only when pharmacists become impossible to ignore. There is a form of power that no government can legislate into existence: the power of competence, character, relevance, innovation, economic contribution, leadership and the consistent ability to solve problems that matter to society.
A pharmacist who continually upgrades professional knowledge is building personal power. A pharmacist who develops competence in digital health and artificial intelligence is preparing for emerging practice. A community pharmacist who transforms a premises from merely a place where medicines are sold into a genuine healthcare destination is empowering the profession. A hospital pharmacist who demonstrates measurable improvements in medication outcomes strengthens the case for pharmaceutical care. An industrial pharmacist who builds a sustainable manufacturing enterprise advances medicine security. An academic pharmacist whose research solves real health problems creates societal value.
The young pharmacist who develops competence beyond the minimum required for registration is investing in the future. The pharmacist whose integrity is so established that his or her word can be trusted is accumulating perhaps the most valuable professional capital of all: credibility.
This internal form of empowerment does not excuse institutional failure. It ensures that pharmacists are prepared to use opportunity when it comes, and capable of creating opportunity when it does not. (Continues next edition)
By Pharm. (Dr) Lolu Ojo, BPharm, MBA, PharmD, FPCPharm, FPSN, FNAPharm
