The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) has called on the leadership of the National House of Assembly (NASS) for an urgent amendment of the Fake Drug Act of 1989 by Decree 17, to about improved sanctions such as huge fines of N20 million, lifetime jail sentences and even death sentences for fake drug merchants in the country. It maintained that this will serve as deterrent to the people engaging in the criminal act henceforth.
The PSN has also commended the ongoing enforcement activities at three open drug markets in the country by the National Agency for Food and Drug, Administration and Control (NAFDAC), describing it as the right step in the right direction, while it called on the Federal Government to swing into full implementation of the Nigerian Drug Distribution Guidelines (NDDG), officially commissioned in 2015.
PSN President, Pharm. Tanko Ayuba, made this call Thursday, at the Pharmacy House, in Lagos, while briefing journalists on the forthcoming Presidential Inauguration and the investiture of 145 new Fellows of the Society, which will hold at the Abuja Continental Hotel. On 28 February, 2025.
Ayuba averred that the full implementation of the NDDG is the only means of motivating genuine players in the drug markets to relocate to the approved Coordinated Wholesale Centres (CWCs) in Lagos, Anambra and Abia states respectively. He pointed out that it will be unfair for the CWCs in Kano State to be operational while those of the three states are yet to be in operation due to construction of the CWCs which is almost at zero levels.
“The National Assembly must go ahead to consider improved sanctions including possible huge fines of over 20 million, life jail sentences or even death sentences for fake drug dealers.
“Let it be said again that these fake drug dealers are de facto murderers because anyone who tampers with life-saving commodities inherently set out to kill ab initio,” he stated.
Pharm. Ayuba has also condemned the relegation of pharmacists’ roles in some government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) where other health workers are employed to man drug stores in place of pharmacists, noting that the Society is ready to take up concerned authorities in the interest of public health and to protect Nigerian citizens as the right professionals in charge of drugs and related matters.
The number one pharmacist in the country stated the position of the Society regarding this anomaly, noting that “the foundation for these illogicalities was gradually laid and consolidated in the last ten years at the Federal Ministry of Health which has systematically decimated the status, role and significance of pharmacists who are no longer invited to even stakeholder consultations in the health sector.”
He emphasised the importance of sensitising the government at all levels that the expected benefit package to safeguard public health will not be achievable if they don’t comply fully with the relevant laws.
Citing Section 22 of the PCN Act, which stipulates that any location where drugs are sold, stocked, dispensed, etc must be registered by the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, he argued that it is a matter of common sense as this implies that once drug items are available in a health facility, the Pharmacy must be registered by a Superintendent Pharmacist (section 29 PCN Act).
According to him: “The government oftentimes is the biggest violator of its own laws because our experience reveals that less than 25 per cent of the MDAs at the federal level have registered pharmacies or pharmacists in their employment, yet they actively stock and dispense drugs to consumers of health which is a major source of danger to these unsuspecting consumers.
“The impunity is spreading at an alarming rate such that even federal health institutions now advertise for health personnel and choose to ignore the employment of pharmacists as we saw with the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Benin in a well-circulated advert,
“In the last few days, we have observed that health workers were approved to man health facilities in correctional centres in Nigeria, but again these centres which will all stock drugs were not placed to engage pharmacists in what is a major distortion of an ideal health service dispensation.”
“We shall subsequently take this challenge up with the concerned authorities in the bid to protect public health and the requisite safety nets inherent in the indiscriminate, poor and wretched drug use and management which are palpable fallouts of these misnomers.”
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