Nigeria’s Silent Poisoning Crisis: Inside NAFDAC’s Failure to Protect a Nation and Nigerians’ Growing Call to Sack Director-General Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye
By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo
Nigeria is facing a dangerous public health crisis involving fake, substandard, and potentially hazardous medicines, food, beverages, and other regulated products, and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, appears increasingly challenged in staying ahead of the problem. For millions of Nigerians, the question is no longer simply whether unsafe products exist, but whether the regulatory system is sufficiently strong, coordinated, and responsive to protect them from harm.
The problem cuts across virtually every part of the consumer environment. From medicines sold through informal outlets to questionable beverages, cosmetics, and food products found in markets across the country, Nigerians are routinely confronted with products whose safety, quality, authenticity, or regulatory status may be difficult to establish.
The danger is particularly serious in the pharmaceutical sector. Nigeria imports a substantial proportion of its medicines and active pharmaceutical ingredients, leaving the supply chain exposed to foreign exchange pressures, inflation, international logistics, and weaknesses in border control. NAFDAC itself has acknowledged the scale of the challenge, while the agency’s leadership has linked the counterfeit-medicine problem partly to regulatory gaps.
But the problem does not stop at medicines.
The same problem appears in the food market, perhaps in an even more troubling form. Consumers purchase palm oil, fufu, and other food products from open markets, often without packaging, labelling, traceability, or any reliable means of determining how the products were processed or whether they have been adulterated.
NAFDAC has explained that traditionally processed, unbranded, and unpackaged foods sold in open markets do not fall within its direct regulatory oversight in the same way as registered, processed, packaged, and branded products. Routine monitoring of such markets involves state and local government authorities and their relevant environmental-health and consumer-protection structures.
That explanation may be legally relevant, but it does not answer the question that matters most to the ordinary Nigerian consumer: who is actually protecting them?
The Nigerian consumer does not buy jurisdiction. The Nigerian consumer buys food.
If a person walks into a market and buys palm oil or fufu contaminated with harmful substances, that consumer is not interested in which level of government has statutory responsibility. The consumer expects the Nigerian state to have a functioning system capable of identifying dangerous products, removing them from circulation, and holding those responsible accountable.
This is the heart of the case being made against NAFDAC’s current posture, both by everyday citizens and by critics within the industry.
To be fair, NAFDAC has not been doing nothing.
The agency recently announced that it had secured 64 convictions against counterfeiters and has continued to push for stronger penalties for the production and distribution of fake and substandard products. NAFDAC has also achieved significant regulatory milestones, including Nigeria’s successful maintenance of the World Health Organization’s Maturity Level 3 status for its medicines and vaccines regulatory system.
Those achievements matter and should not be dismissed.
But an agency can be simultaneously effective on paper and insufficiently effective in practice.
Convictions, seizures, certifications, and enforcement raids are important indicators of regulatory activity. They do not, by themselves, answer whether dangerous products continue to reach ordinary Nigerians, whether counterfeiters are being permanently dismantled, or whether the system is capable of preventing the same problems from repeatedly resurfacing.
The continuing volume of complaints illustrates the challenge.
According to NAFDAC Director-General Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, the agency received 225 complaints about suspected counterfeit and unsafe products through its official channels in August alone. Adeyeye also said the agency typically receives more than 200 complaints from citizens every month through its 24-hour call centre and other official reporting channels.
That figure should not be interpreted to mean that all 225 complaints were subsequently confirmed as counterfeit products. There were complaints concerning suspected counterfeit and unsafe products. Nevertheless, the number provides an important indication of the scale and persistence of the problem confronting the regulator.
NAFDAC has also urged Nigerians to report suspected safety violations through official complaint channels rather than relying entirely on unverified claims circulating on social media, stressing that scientific testing is necessary to establish whether a product is genuinely unsafe or counterfeit.
That is reasonable.
But it also raises a more important investigative question: what happens after the complaints are made?
How quickly are they investigated? How many result in seizures, recalls, prosecutions, or convictions? How many dangerous products are actually removed from circulation? How many complaints remain unresolved? And how effectively does NAFDAC track repeat offenders and prevent seized or counterfeit products from reappearing in another market under a different name?
These are the questions that determine whether a regulatory system is working effectively.
There is also growing public concern about the visibility and effectiveness of NAFDAC’s enforcement strategy. Critics argue that the agency sometimes appears to be engaged in a cycle of raids and seizures followed by the re-emergence of similar counterfeit products elsewhere. The concern is essentially a “whack-a-mole” problem: one location is raided, some products are seized, some offenders are prosecuted, yet the wider supply chain remains sufficiently intact for the problem to return.
The agency’s position deserves to be heard. NAFDAC operates in an environment of significant institutional constraints, including manpower shortages, infrastructure limitations, inadequate testing capacity in some areas, weak sanctions, and the enormous size of Nigeria’s consumer market.
The Director-General has also spoken publicly about the difficulties facing the agency, including the need for additional personnel and improved infrastructure. Reports that the agency has been awaiting approval to recruit hundreds of additional staff point to a genuine capacity problem.
But capacity constraints cannot become a permanent explanation for regulatory shortcomings.
After years under the same leadership, Nigerians are entitled to ask what structural reforms have been achieved, what gaps remain, and why consumers continue to encounter the same categories of dangerous products.
Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye has repeatedly defended her record. She has spoken about returning to Nigeria after decades in the United States because she wanted to serve the country and help “remove Nigeria’s shame.” She has also defended NAFDAC’s enforcement efforts and maintained that regulatory decisions cannot be based on popularity.
That defence deserves consideration.
But public office is ultimately judged not only by intention, effort, or personal sacrifice, but by measurable outcomes.
A regulator can conduct raids, seize products, and prosecute offenders while consumers continue to face the same dangers. The question is therefore not whether NAFDAC is active. The question is whether its activities are producing sufficient protection for the Nigerian public.
The controversy surrounding NAFDAC’s ban on alcoholic drinks in sachets and small PET bottles provides another example of the difficult balance between public health regulation and economic consequences.
NAFDAC has defended the policy as a public-health measure, while businesses, workers, and other stakeholders have raised concerns about livelihoods and the economic impact of the restrictions.
There may be legitimate public-health reasons behind the policy. But regulatory enforcement must also be accompanied by clear transition strategies, stakeholder engagement, evidence-based evaluation, and effective implementation. Otherwise, even a policy introduced for a legitimate public-health purpose can generate widespread resistance and undermine public confidence.
The same question of confidence arose after a viral video showed Prof. Adeyeye laughing when asked about calls for her resignation during a media interaction concerning reports about fake yoghurt, adulterated palm oil, and counterfeit beverages.
Whatever the full context of that exchange, the optics were damaging.
At a time when Nigerians are expressing concern about the safety of products they consume, a public reaction that appears dismissive can deepen the perception that the regulator is disconnected from the anxiety of ordinary consumers. Leadership communication matters, particularly during a public-health controversy.
There are also questions surrounding the movement of counterfeit and substandard products into the country.
It would be irresponsible to accuse port officials or other government personnel of complicity without evidence. But the scale of the counterfeit market raises legitimate questions about inspection systems, cargo screening, intelligence-sharing, risk profiling, and cooperation between NAFDAC, the Nigeria Customs Service, and other relevant agencies.
If counterfeit products continue to enter Nigeria in significant quantities, the country must know where the weaknesses are occurring.
At the same time, NAFDAC personnel themselves operate under difficult conditions. The agency has reported incidents of intimidation, harassment, and threats against its officers. Enforcement against powerful commercial interests and organised counterfeit networks is not without risk.
This is precisely why the Nigerian government must provide regulatory agencies with the resources, legal protection, technology, and institutional support required to perform their duties.
The potential health consequences of counterfeit, adulterated, and substandard medicines and food products are serious. Unsafe products can expose consumers to poisoning, treatment failure, adverse reactions, and other potentially severe health consequences. But claims linking particular products to nationwide rates of kidney disease, liver failure, or cancer must be supported by robust medical evidence rather than assumptions.
That is why the regulatory system must be built around scientific testing, traceability, surveillance, and reliable public-health data.
Nigeria cannot afford a situation in which dangerous products are discovered only after they have already spread widely among consumers.
Another major problem is the weakness of deterrence.
Where penalties are too weak, prosecution is slow and offenders can return to business after paying relatively modest costs, counterfeit production becomes an attractive commercial enterprise.
NAFDAC has called for stronger penalties, including tougher sanctions for counterfeiters. That argument deserves serious consideration. But stronger laws alone will not solve the problem if investigations remain slow, prosecutions fail to produce convictions, or enforcement agencies lack the resources to follow the money behind organised counterfeit networks.
The country needs a coordinated approach involving NAFDAC, Customs, the police, EFCC, where financial crimes are involved, state and local authorities, market associations, manufacturers, healthcare professionals, and civil society.
The open-market food problem illustrates this perfectly.
If unbranded and unpackaged palm oil, fufu, and similar traditionally processed foods fall outside NAFDAC’s direct regulatory responsibility, then state and local government health inspectors must have the capacity to fill that gap.
Do they?
Can they routinely inspect thousands of markets? Do they have adequate numbers of environmental-health officers? Do they have the training, testing equipment, and financial resources required to identify dangerous contamination? Can they trace the source of contaminated products? Can they enforce penalties against repeat offenders?
If the answer to these questions is no, then Nigeria has a regulatory gap that cannot simply be explained away by jurisdiction.
This is bigger than NAFDAC.
It is a whole-of-government public-health and consumer-protection problem.
But because NAFDAC is the country’s principal federal regulator for food, drugs, and other regulated products, its leadership cannot escape scrutiny.
The growing public demand for Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye’s removal must therefore be considered within the broader question of leadership accountability.
Calling for the removal of a public official does not necessarily mean that the official personally caused every failure within an institution. It means asking whether the person occupying the highest leadership position has delivered enough measurable improvement, institutional reform, public confidence, and regulatory effectiveness to justify remaining in office.
That is the legitimate question Nigerians are now asking about NAFDAC.
After years at the helm, has the agency become sufficiently capable of anticipating threats rather than merely reacting to them?
Has the regulatory system become sufficiently transparent for Nigerians to know what happens to their complaints?
Has enforcement become sufficiently coordinated to prevent counterfeiters from repeatedly returning to the market?
Has the agency secured the personnel, technology, and infrastructure it needs?
Has cooperation with Customs, state governments, local governments, and other regulators become strong enough to close the gaps through which dangerous products pass?
And most importantly, does the Nigerian public have sufficient confidence that NAFDAC is protecting them?
These questions should not be dismissed as an attack on one individual.
They are questions of institutional accountability.
Prof. Adeyeye may point to convictions, seizures, regulatory milestones, and international recognition as evidence of her administration’s achievements. Critics may point to counterfeit products, recurring complaints, open-market dangers, regulatory gaps, and declining public confidence.
Both sides should be examined.
But the ultimate test of a food and drug regulator is not the number of press conferences it holds or the number of enforcement operations it announces. It is whether Nigerians can reasonably trust that the food they eat, the medicines they take, and the regulated products they purchase are safe.
The Nigerian consumer should not have to become a laboratory scientist before buying food.
The Nigerian patient should not have to become a pharmaceutical expert before buying medicine.
The Nigerian parent should not have to investigate a product’s authenticity before giving it to a child.
That is why Nigeria needs a stronger, faster, more transparent, and better coordinated regulatory system.
The solution requires more than periodic raids. It requires permanent market surveillance, effective complaint-response mechanisms, rapid and scientifically sound testing, stronger traceability systems, better border controls, digital tracking of regulated products, intelligence-led enforcement, financial investigations into organised counterfeit networks, and meaningful cooperation between federal, state, and local authorities.
It also requires leadership willing to accept criticism, acknowledge gaps, and demonstrate measurable improvements.
NAFDAC deserves recognition where it has succeeded.
But recognition cannot become immunity from scrutiny.
Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye deserves to have her defence heard, just as her critics deserve to have their concerns investigated.
The central question is therefore not whether NAFDAC has done anything.
It clearly has.
The question is whether it has done enough.
For an agency entrusted with protecting the health of more than 200 million Nigerians, “doing something” cannot be the final standard.
The standard must be whether the system is sufficiently effective to protect citizens from dangerous products before those products reach their homes, hospitals, schools, and communities.
The country is not asking for perfection.
It is asking for a regulator that treats every Nigerian consumer, regardless of income, location, or social status, as equally worth protecting.
If the current leadership can provide the urgency, accountability, enforcement, transparency, and public confidence required to meet that responsibility, then it should demonstrate it.
If it cannot, then the growing call for a change of leadership at NAFDAC deserves serious consideration.
The question Nigeria must now confront is simple: can the current leadership of NAFDAC convince Nigerians that it has the capacity and urgency to protect them from the silent public-health crisis unfolding around them?
The growing calls for Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye’s removal suggest that public confidence in the agency’s leadership is under serious pressure. Whether that pressure is justified must ultimately be judged by measurable results, institutional reforms, and the regulator’s ability to protect Nigerians from dangerous products.
If the current leadership can demonstrate that it remains capable of delivering those results, it should do so. If it cannot, then the question of whether NAFDAC needs a change of leadership can no longer be dismissed as mere public pressure. It becomes a legitimate question of accountability.
Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist, human rights advocate, and publisher, and the founder of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate, PIHRA. His work focuses on governance, accountability, and the protection of fundamental rights across Nigeria and Africa. His reporting has appeared in Vanguard, Daily Trust, Sahara Reporters, African Defence Forum, Opinion Nigeria, and Daily Intel, among others.
Read more of his work on the PIHRA blog: https://profilesinternationalhumanrightsadv.blogspot.com
For tips, feedback, or collaboration, reach him at dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com
