A retired Nigerian diplomat, Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie, has called on the federal government to stop destroying businesses of hardworking Nigerians in guise of checking substandard drugs and illegal refineries in the country.
Onochie also urged the federal government to take a positive look at the producers of the products and fashion a policy that will constructively engage them.
The former diplomat, who at various times was the nation’s Charge d’Affairs in the Philippines 1988, Algeria and Tunisia, 1989-1992, spoke with our correspondent in a chat while reacting to the destruction of over 240 shops on Cemetery Road Market, Aba in Abia State over fake and counterfeit drugs by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, (NAFDAC) last month.
Onochie stated that rather than destroy them, the government through NAFDAC should concentrate on the development of pharmaceutical sector, in line with rules and standards.
He added that the government should “Encourage, improve and periodically and strictly inspect the quality of the drugs, and enjoin them to use their own labels, and to stop faking others’ labels. In other climes, they categorize them as Generic drugs, not fake drugs, and ensure correct quality control.
“To preserve and promote our own industries, protect incomes and the employment of our people. 240 drug manufacturing shops is a lot, and soon these can earn export income and create new markets: call them cottage pharmaceutical producers, because most factories and industries begin from rooms and ships.
“The government should cease from destroying our people, industrious and patriotic citizens.
“Scheduled or routine standards/quality inspections, directed specifically by the Inspectorate Division of NAFDAC has that statutory responsibility which it must meet. It is not to be substituted or supplemented as raiding pharmaceutical shops and closing them down.
“There are thousands of Nigerian pharmacists who make and market drugs. How many of them do NAFDAC visit or shut down?
“The central issue again is development of our pharmaceutical sector, in line with rules and standards.
“But the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, and big (local/foreign) pharmaceutical companies, in cohort with Government, want to follow the “Law” and by so doing stifle, monopolize and drive away other sector units who have knowledge, experience, capital invested etc driven out of the sector because no one speaks for them”.
The ex-diplomat continued: “It is the same thing that the government and NNPC have done to the Chemical/Petroleum engineers in the oil refining sector. Biafra used local refineries to survive the War.
“In Long Beach, and Wilmington, Los Angeles, California, USA, you will still see small refineries and crude oil producers, who earn great money, pay taxes and add to the GDP, with only one tanker and small pipes and boilers as refineries.
“No one bundles or arrests them, the government ensures periodic inspections which are strictly enforced. But here in Nigeria, local input is destroyed, unemployment is a hard bane, even earning foreign exchange from several sources, including humble sources, is denied the society.
“Over all GDP is affected, dollar value, and the unemployment quotient are the most critical, yet government pretends that all is well, using the Navy to destroy local budding oil industry sector: unless “big” refineries produce petroleum products, society relies on dollar imported products.
“These wrong attitudes and policies of government need to change so that the people will prosper!”
He called on the government to begin with local charity, not the favours it bestows on foreign or only big investors, adding that cottage industries are the solid foundation of self reliant societies, where unemployment is defeated by the protection of local industrial sector. .
