Blaming the public for systemic failures: Why Moji Adeyeye has lost the moral authority to lead NAFDAC, and why her 56% illiteracy claim has no evidentiary basis

By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo

Nigerians are not ignorant, and they should not be made to bear the blame for weaknesses within systems established to protect their health and safety. What Nigerians are entitled to demand is a clear explanation of why counterfeit, adulterated, and potentially dangerous products continue to find their way into the market, how those products evade regulatory controls, and what the relevant authorities are doing to prevent them from reaching consumers. If the Director-General of NAFDAC is unable to provide a sufficiently detailed and evidence-based explanation of those issues, attributing the problem primarily to Nigerians allegedly not reading or understanding product instructions risks appearing to shift responsibility away from the regulatory system and onto the public. For a senior public official, particularly the head of a scientific regulatory agency, describing Nigerians as “very ignorant” on national television is, at the very least, a deeply troubling choice of language and raises legitimate questions about the quality of public communication and institutional accountability. Given Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye’s academic and professional credentials, Nigerians are entitled to expect a higher standard of evidence, explanation, and leadership from the agency under her direction. The issue, therefore, is not whether she should be criticised for defending NAFDAC’s record, but whether her explanations adequately address the systemic concerns confronting the agency. If substantial questions remain unanswered about regulatory effectiveness, market surveillance, enforcement, traceability, and public protection, it would be reasonable for the appropriate authorities to subject the agency’s performance and leadership to rigorous, independent scrutiny. Nigerians have seen enough of public institutions explaining systemic problems without adequately addressing the consequences for the citizens they are mandated to protect.

The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, has triggered a fresh national controversy after describing Nigerians as “very ignorant” and saying, “We don’t read. We don’t understand,” while defending NAFDAC’s role in food safety and pesticide regulation. Adeyeye made the remarks during an interview on October 5, 2026, while explaining NAFDAC’s regulatory responsibilities and the division of duties between the agency and the Ministry of Agriculture.

The most troubling part of the interview, however, was not merely the language used against Nigerians. It was the statistic deployed to support her argument. During the interview, Adeyeye stated: “We have about 56 per cent illiteracy,” using the figure while explaining why some farmers may misuse pesticides or fail to understand instructions on chemical products. That claim deserves rigorous scrutiny because a national statistic of such magnitude cannot responsibly be deployed by the head of a scientific regulatory agency without identifying its source, year, definition, population, and methodology.

The latest World Bank data, sourced from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, records Nigeria’s adult literacy rate at 70.41 percent in 2024 for people aged 15 and above. The World Bank defines the indicator as the percentage of people aged 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short, simple statement about their everyday life. The mathematical complement of that literacy figure is approximately 29.59 percent, although that complement should not automatically be described as a separately measured national “illiteracy rate” because literacy statistics can vary according to definitions, age groups, and methodologies. What is clear is that the current World Bank and UNESCO indicators do not support presenting 56 percent as Nigeria’s current national adult illiteracy rate.

Where exactly did Adeyeye obtain the 56 percent figure? Is it based on a particular state, age group, rural population, functional-literacy assessment, agricultural population, historical dataset, or another definition of literacy entirely? If such a source exists, NAFDAC owes Nigerians the transparency to identify it. If the figure was derived from a different methodology, that methodology must be explained rather than presented as though it were the current national adult-illiteracy rate. Until the underlying evidence is produced, the figure remains fundamentally unsubstantiated in the context in which it was publicly presented.

The distinction matters because literacy statistics are not interchangeable. A figure measuring the ability of a particular population to read simple sentences cannot automatically be substituted for a national adult-literacy indicator. A historical estimate cannot simply be presented as the current national position, and a statistic relating to farmers cannot be transformed into a statistic for the entire Nigerian population. For a regulator responsible for scientific and public-health decisions, precision in evidence is not optional.

NAFDAC is not an ordinary government department. It is a scientific regulatory institution whose responsibilities include the regulation of food, drugs, chemicals, and other products under its statutory mandate. Its work involves registration, laboratory analysis, inspection, surveillance, enforcement, and the protection of Nigerians from products that may threaten public health. The credibility of such an institution depends not only on what it seizes or destroys, but also on the accuracy of the evidence its leadership presents to the public.

Adeyeye is correct on one important point: NAFDAC does not regulate every aspect of fresh agricultural produce in the market, in an interview, she explained that NAFDAC’s mandate covered processed and semi-processed foods rather than fresh produce sold directly in markets. She also said the Ministry of Agriculture has the primary responsibility for farmer education.

NAFDAC unquestionably has a regulatory role in the pesticide chain. NAFDAC’s Pesticide Registration Regulations 2019 expressly apply to pesticides manufactured, imported, exported, advertised, sold, distributed, or used in Nigeria. Subject to specified exceptions, the regulations prohibit the manufacture, formulation, importation, exportation, advertisement, sale, distribution, or use of pesticides unless they are registered in accordance with the regulations. NAFDAC’s own guidance identifies pesticides used in agriculture, public health, horticulture, and food storage and notes that some are sufficiently toxic to require strict control.

The farmer, however, cannot become the last link in a regulatory chain that begins elsewhere. A farmer did not manufacture or formulate the pesticide, determine its active ingredients, design its label, register the product, import it into Nigeria, distribute it across the country, or place it in a market. If a dangerous or counterfeit pesticide reaches a farmer, asking only whether that farmer could read the label is an incomplete, the proper investigation must travel backwards through the supply chain: who manufactured the product, who imported it, whether it was registered, whether the registration number was genuine, whether the product was tested, where it entered the country, which distributor supplied it, which retailer sold it, and whether complaints or warnings were previously received.

This is where the public debate about NAFDAC becomes much more important than an argument over whether Nigerians read instructions. A regulatory system exists precisely because the average citizen cannot independently test the chemical composition of a pesticide, pharmaceutical product, food item, or cosmetic. The responsibility of a regulator is therefore not simply to educate citizens after exposure. It is also to establish systems that prevent unlawful, counterfeit, adulterated, and dangerous products from entering the market in the first place.

Illiteracy should consequently be treated as a regulatory-design challenge, not as a convenient explanation for regulatory weakness. If some farmers cannot read conventional pesticide labels, the answer is not to insult them. The answer is to build systems that anticipate that reality through pictograms, local-language instructions, agricultural extension networks, radio education, community demonstrations, SMS and USSD alerts, digital verification, stronger distributor controls, and more aggressive market surveillance. NAFDAC already operates its Integrated Regulatory Information Management System, which provides online regulatory services and allows users to verify product registrations and other regulatory documents. The existence of that system raises an even more important question: how effectively does it work at the point where Nigerians actually encounter products?

A digital registration system is valuable only if counterfeiters cannot easily reproduce registration numbers, consumers can verify products, enforcement officers can detect fraudulent registrations, and dangerous products can be traced through the supply chain. The test of regulatory performance should therefore be measurable. How many fake registration numbers are detected? How many suspicious products are identified before reaching consumers? How quickly does NAFDAC respond to complaints? How many investigations are opened? How many result in prosecutions and convictions? How many repeat offenders return to the market? How much time passes between a complaint, laboratory confirmation, enforcement action, and public warning?

There is evidence that NAFDAC is carrying out substantial enforcement activity. The agency reported receiving 225 complaints about suspected counterfeit products through its complaint channel in August 2026. Adeyeye said the agency receives more than 200 complaints monthly and that such reports provide leads for investigation. NAFDAC also reported that its nationwide post-market surveillance operations between May and July 2026 resulted in 7,210 products being mopped up across the country. The reported products included food and water, drugs and herbals, cosmetics, medical devices, chemicals, vaccines and biologics, with food and water accounting for 3,633 and drugs and herbals accounting for 2,459.

These figures should not be dismissed. They represent significant enforcement activity and demonstrate that the agency is not sitting idle. NAFDAC also reported securing 64 convictions for counterfeiting-related offences, with sentences ranging from one to seven years without an option of a fine. But enforcement figures also raise a difficult question for the regulator: how many dangerous or non-compliant products reach Nigerians before NAFDAC finds them? The number of products removed is an enforcement metric. It does not, by itself, tell Nigerians how effective the preventive system is.

NAFDAC has also reported that coordinated raids in Idumota, Lagos; Onitsha, Anambra State; and Aba, Abia State, between February and March 2025 resulted in the seizure and destruction of more than 137 40-foot truckloads of counterfeit and substandard products valued at more than ₦1.5 trillion. These extraordinary figures deserve recognition as evidence of enforcement effort, but they are also evidence of the enormous scale of the illicit market confronting Nigeria. They should not, by themselves, be interpreted as proof that NAFDAC has either succeeded or failed overall. The critical question is what those figures reveal about prevention, detection, market penetration, and the ability of counterfeit networks to continue operating.

The public, therefore, deserves more than aggregate monetary figures. NAFDAC should publish independently auditable information showing, where legally permissible, the categories and origins of products seized or destroyed, manufacturers, importers, and distributors involved, the prevalence of counterfeit registration numbers, repeat offenders, prosecutions, convictions, and acquittals, as well as the time taken from detection to enforcement. The public should be able to assess not only how much NAFDAC removes from the market, but how effectively it prevents dangerous products from entering it.

The controversy deepened in September 2026 when Adeyeye faced questions over calls for her resignation and publicly defended her record. Contemporary reporting records her rejecting calls to resign and defending her tenure. Adeyeye has repeatedly argued that she returned from the United States to serve Nigeria and help rebuild NAFDAC. In September, she said she had spent 37 years in the United States, including about three decades as a professor, before returning to Nigeria, describing her motivation as helping to remove what she called some of Nigeria’s shame.

Adeyeye has also previously said she inherited substantial financial, technological, and operational problems when she assumed office in 2017. In her September 2026 account, she said NAFDAC had about $3.2 million in outstanding obligations, including unpaid taxes and debts owed to contractors, and that much of the agency’s equipment was not functioning when she arrived. She has also described improvements in NAFDAC’s regulatory maturity and institutional capacity during her tenure.

But after almost nine years, 2017 cannot remain a permanent explanation for every weakness discovered in 2026. The relevant question is therefore what NAFDAC looks like now. Have its laboratories been adequately rebuilt and modernised? Has its information-technology infrastructure become sufficiently reliable? Have inherited financial liabilities been resolved? Has intelligence-led enforcement improved? Has the agency developed stronger systems for detecting counterfeit registration numbers? Can dangerous products be traced from importer to distributor and retailer? And have the agency’s enforcement successes translated into measurable improvements in public safety?

Adeyeye’s October 5 interview says she discussed chronic understaffing, with NAFDAC operating with about 2,000 staff across a population of more than 240 million. Adeyeye has similarly publicly argued that the agency needs substantially more personnel. That is a legitimate institutional concern. An understaffed regulator cannot be expected to inspect every facility, monitor every market, and investigate every complaint with equal speed. But manpower shortages cannot become a permanent explanation for every regulatory weakness. Leadership also involves identifying where limited resources can produce the greatest public-health impact.

The deeper problem with Adeyeye’s argument is therefore not simply that she used an offensive description of Nigerians. It is that the argument risks shifting responsibility from the regulatory system to the people the system exists to protect. A poor farmer, market woman, parent, or medicine consumer should not be expected to possess the scientific capacity of a regulator. The citizen buys a product; the state establishes the safeguards. If NAFDAC cannot physically reach millions of farmers, it must build systems that multiply the effect of its limited workforce through technology, intelligence, partnerships, agricultural extension services, local authorities, professional associations, and targeted surveillance.

This is particularly important where pesticides and other chemicals are concerned. NAFDAC’s regulatory framework recognises the risks associated with pesticides and establishes controls around their registration and use. The existence of a separate role for the Ministry of Agriculture does not erase NAFDAC’s own responsibilities. The two institutions should work together rather than allow overlapping responsibilities to become an excuse for shifting blame. The same principle applies to counterfeit medicines, adulterated food, unsafe cosmetics, and other regulated products. Where dangerous products repeatedly evade regulatory controls, the public has a right to ask where the chain failed.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Minister of Health should therefore consider commissioning an independent performance review of NAFDAC under its current leadership. Such a review should examine border enforcement, counterfeit entry channels, product registration, fake registration numbers, chemical and pesticide controls, market surveillance, complaint handling, investigation timelines, prosecutions and convictions, traceability, staffing, laboratory capacity, digital infrastructure, and the extent to which institutional weaknesses identified in 2017 have actually been resolved. The objective should be evidence, not political persecution.

Such a review should also provide an opportunity to distinguish genuine achievements from unresolved weaknesses. If the evidence shows that NAFDAC has significantly strengthened regulatory enforcement, Nigerians should know it. If the evidence shows persistent structural weaknesses, the government should know those weaknesses and act through funding, restructuring, legislation, technology, staffing, enforcement, or leadership changes where necessary. Public accountability should not be based on either blind praise or automatic condemnation.

But the 56 percent statistic remains the immediate credibility test. Adeyeye should identify the precise source, year, population, definition, and methodology behind her claim that approximately 56 percent of Nigerians are illiterate. The public record establishes that she made the claim during an interview. What remains unresolved is the evidentiary basis for the figure, which is plainly different from the 70.41 percent adult literacy rate recorded by the World Bank and UNESCO for 2024. There is an important distinction between establishing that the figure is unsupported by the current World Bank and UNESCO indicators and proving what was in Adeyeye’s mind when she used it.

If NAFDAC possesses another credible dataset, it should publish it. If the statistic was based on a different population, year, or methodology, that should be stated. If the statistic was wrong, the responsible response is correction, not defensiveness. After nearly nine years at the helm of Nigeria’s principal food and drug regulator, the standard should be higher than public confrontation, aggregate seizure figures, or explanations about citizen ignorance. Regulatory credibility requires scientific accuracy, transparent data, measurable prevention, effective enforcement, traceability, accountability, and respect for the people whose health the institution exists to protect.

Adeyeye has every right to defend her record, and NAFDAC’s documented enforcement achievements deserve recognition. But leadership of a public-health regulator also requires accepting legitimate scrutiny. If a statistic central to the public explanation of a regulatory problem cannot be substantiated, and if citizens are publicly described as ignorant instead of being treated as stakeholders whose safety is at issue, serious questions naturally arise about institutional judgment and leadership credibility. The 56 percent claim, therefore, cannot simply be dismissed as a passing comment. It goes to the heart of how a scientific regulator communicates evidence to the Nigerian public.

The question is not whether Nigerians have literacy challenges. They do. The question is whether the head of NAFDAC can accurately define those challenges, distinguish evidence from assumption, accept scrutiny, and design regulations around the realities of the population it serves. That is why the controversy is ultimately bigger than one interview or one statistic. It concerns whether Nigeria’s principal food and drug regulator is prepared to place scientific evidence, preventive regulation, and institutional accountability above public relations and blame. If the evidence ultimately demonstrates that the 56 percent figure was false or materially misleading, the consequences should extend beyond correction of a statistic to a serious examination of the leadership culture that allowed such a claim to be publicly presented.

Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist, human rights advocate, and policy analyst based in Nigeria. He is the founder and publisher of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate (PIHRA), a platform documenting the courage of human rights defenders and examining issues of governance, accountability, security, and fundamental rights.

His reporting on Nigerian governance, security-sector accountability, public finance, and human rights has appeared in Sahara Reporters, Vanguard, Daily Trust, African Defence Forum, Opinion Nigeria, and Daily Intel.

Read more of his work on the PIHRA website:
https://www.profilesinternationalhumanrightsadvocate.com.ng/

For tips, feedback, or collaboration, contact him at dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com.