The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control has stated its intention to return to the ports and borders to enable it to effectively control the importation of narcotics and other hazardous substances into the country.
The agency said it would work in collaboration with relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies and also with the Office of the National Security Adviser.
In a statement issued by NAFDAC on Tuesday, the Director General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, said the agency’s action was based on the recommendations contained in a communiqué issued at the end of the National Chemical Security Training Conference in Abuja last Friday.
“The conference held under the auspices of the ONSA, with the theme, ‘Towards a secure importation, distribution, storage and use of chemicals in Nigeria,” the release noted.
Adeyeye expressed the view that returning to the borders and ports would restore the agency’s key responsibility of monitoring the importation of controlled drugs and chemical substances in various forms.
“They require some level of expertise to monitor their industry-wide application and use,” Adeyeye said.
She commended the Office of the NSA, the Chemical Society of Nigeria and other key stakeholders for recognising NAFDAC as a key player in the national security architecture by this singular act of restoring the presence of NAFDAC officials at all designated ports of entry and land borders.
She noted that the laws that set up NAFDAC empower it to statutorily operate at the ports.
“The clearance of regulated products outside of the current legal framework poses immediate and life-threatening risks to the public as unregistered, spurious and falsified products exit the ports without recourse to the agency’s approval before such products hit the market,” Adeyeye warned.
She assured the public that NAFDAC would continue to contribute its quota to government’s efforts to secure lives and property “by ensuring that only quality, safe, efficacious and wholesome regulated products are consumed by Nigerians, while smuggling of chemical weapons, harmful drugs and substances into the country is checked.”
Posted by Juliet Ekwebelam
