As NAFDAC, police shield criminals – National Mirror

It does seem that public sector corruption in the country has become so entrenched that with the patch of one leak a greater gaping hole resurfaces on the rotten roof. More worrisome, in most cases, is the fact that those on whom the state entrusts sensitive charges are the very culprits undermining the country’s integrity. In May last year, former Chairman/Chief Executive of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Alhaji Ahmadu Giade, disclosed that a cartel comprising some court clerks and prison warders aided 197 convicted drug traffickers to evade serving their sentences. He spoke while supervising the destruction of illicit drugs valued at N3.5 billion at Ibereko, Badagry, in Lagos State.
His exact words: “The police investigated the case and confirmed my findings that 197 drug convicts were left off the hook with the connivance of some court clerks and prison warders…. Statutorily, NDLEA has no business taking care of an accused once the person had been arraigned and remanded in prison custody. The agency discovered that the criminal act took place between the court and the prison after an accused had been sentenced. This is a wake-up call for stakeholders to remain sensitive and prevent any act capable of undermining the criminal justice system”. Again penultimate Saturday, Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State exploded with a similar complaint against supposedly law enforcement officers, when he accused some National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) officials and some members of the Kano State Police Command of conniving with and protecting criminals engaged in selling counterfeit products and drugs to the public. The governor spoke at the premises of the state command of NDLEA during the destruction of cartons of confiscated adulterated chewing gum and drugs valued at N100 million.
“I was shocked that certain NAFDAC officials in the state came to me with the owner of the confiscated goods and were attempting to evade the law and cunningly find a soft landing for the man”, Ganduje lamented, stressing he had already taken up the matter with higher authorities. He also implored the Kano State Police Command to closely monitor its officers and men to ensure they complied with the ethics of their profession, an obvious reference to the collusion of some errant police officers with NAFDAC and drug barons. The sullied reputation of some unscrupulous members of the police force is already in the public domain.
Ganduje’s indictment of NAFDAC officials, to us, is a huge disappointment to the nation, considering the ‘bull-dozer’ image of the agency in the not too distant past. Though recent reports credited to NAFDAC’s authorities claimed the agency had reduced the incidence of fake drugs in the country from 64 percent in 2008 to 6.4 percent in 2011, the public impression has been that the agency lost its teeth and vibrancy with the exit of its former Director-General, the late Professor Dora Akunyili, who once referred to drug counterfeiting as “the highest form of terrorism against public health”.
Between 2001 and late 2008 when Akunyili headed the agency, NAFDAC brought a lull to the dubious businesses of drug counterfeiters. Her combative efforts resonated in the raiding of shops, closing open drug markets in Onitsha and Kano, etc.; and publicly burning confiscated fake and adulterated drugs. The agency deployed stateof- the-art technologies like mPedigree; codification and serialization; Truscan, a hand-held device which helps in detecting counterfeit medicines on the spot; Mobile Authentication Service (MAS), which uses short message services for end-user regulated medication authentication; and the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which could verify regulated products; among others. The process of certifying foods and drugs as fit for human consumption was very rigorous, with scant reports of compromise.
It is doubtful that those credentials that earned Akunyili honour and respect as the most decorated Director-General of NAFDAC are still in the agency’s repository today, if Ganduje’s revelation is anything to go by. Therefore, the Kano governor should not leave his fight against the erring NAFDAC officials half way. He should follow it to a logical conclusion and insist that the officers account for their betrayal of public trust. Indeed, the wise words of Warren Edward Buffett, that American business mogul, investor and philanthropist revered as the most successful investor in the world, would suffice here: “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks”. It is, therefore, time for a radical surgery of NAFDAC to rid it of bad eggs.