Nigeria still battles to make food, drugs safe — NAFDAC boss

THE Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) Dr. Paul Orhii, has said Nigeria is still grappling with the challenge to make safe qualitative, affordable food and medicines available to the people.

He said this Wednesday in Lagos at the November Breakfast Forum of the Nigerian-South African Chamber of Commerce (NSACC) , sponsored by UAC Foods, a division of UAC of Nigeria.

Orhii who was represented by his Special Assistant, Ms Aleha Okpa, said NAFDAC has done quite remarkably in supporting the growth of manufacturing facilities and related businesses in Nigeria.

"We recognise that the capacity of any regulatory agency must be above those it is regulating. Anything short of that will result in poor products in circulation in that country. Therefore, NAFDAC has invested substantially in upgrading of equipment, facilities and massive staff training," Orhii said.

He listed the current initiatives to include: "Re-engineering of the NAFDAC Website to be more professional, regularly updated, user friendly, interactive and with a robust search capability; draft regulations have been produced this year to strategically strengthen our regulatory activities; international collaboration with other countries such as the United States of America, Japan, South Africa, European Union for capacity building training programs for staff of the Agency.

Increased participation in international standards setting meetings aimed at consumer safety, economic protection and increased trade for the country; spirited efforts to combat counterfeiting which has led to an upsurge in the production capacities of our local pharmaceutical industries and streamlining the product registration process to make it more transparent, efficient and significantly reduce the time line for completion."

Others are acquisition of ‘Truscan’, an electronic gadget for the detection of fake and counterfeit drugs and putting in place text messaging system whereby a counterfeit product can be instantly identified by the consumer at the purchase point.

Similarly, the Managing Director of Resources and Trust Company Limited, Mr. Opeyemi Agbaje, who was the resource person at the forum, said that the recent macroeconomic environment in Nigeria has been characterised by a weak financial and market regulation, imprudent lending, capital market exuberance and asset price bubbles. He suggested tighter capital standards, tighter regulation of derivatives, securitisation, hedge funds and rating agencies among others which are likely trends in global regulation.

In a brief review of the fundamental structure of the Nigerian economy, which is based on recent CBN annual report, Agbaje reaffirms that our recent economic growth is driven by the non-oil sector; especially communication, services, agriculture, financial services among others, leading to aggregate non-oil growth of 9.1 per cent in 2008 while oil output declined by 4.8 per cent.

In her address, the Marketing Manager, UAC Foods, Olusola Okunubi, said that UAC will continue to keep faith with the vision and mission of the company.

The vision according to her is: "To be the industry leader in the Nigerian convenience foods market" while the company’s mission is "To experience the thrill of providing safe, hygienic and affordable snacks to our consumers."

Okunubi said UAC Foods is bent on rendering quality services that are convenient, reachable, reliable, time saving and guaranteed value for money.

Also speaking, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian-South African Chamber of Commerce, Sola Obadimu, commended UAC Foods and the participants to the forum.

He said NSACC organises regular business fora to provide veritable platform for Nigerian and South African businessmen to interact and foster viable relationships that can only strengthen the ties between the two nations.