By Orkula Shaagee
The National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has proposed the death penalty for fake drug peddlers, in a bid to the menace of substandard medicine in Nigeria.
Director-General of the agency, Mojisola Adeyeye, who made the proposal when she appeared on Friday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, said only stiff penalties will deter peddlers from purveying drugs that lead to children’s deaths.
“Somebody bought children’s medicine for N13,000 or something like that; another person was selling about N3,000 in the same mall.
“That raised an alarm. Guess what? There was nothing inside that medicine when we tested it in our Kaduna lab. So, I want the death penalty.
“Because you don’t need to put a gun on the head of a child before you kill that child. Just give that child bad medicine,” she asserted.
To implement strict measures that will deter drug peddlers, Adeyeye said the agency is open to collaboration with the judiciary and the National Assembly.
“You cannot fight substandard, falsified medicine in isolation. The agency can do as much as it can, but if there is no deterrent, there’s going to be a problem,” she said.
“Somebody brought in 225mg of Tramadol that can kill anybody, fry the brain and you give a judgment of five years in prison or N250,000. Who doesn’t know that that person will go to the ATM and get N250,000?
“That is part of our problem. No strict measures deter [people] 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 stand up, we’re going to have a problem.