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NAFDAC Vs Onitsha Drug Marketers
Comfort Obi
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Professor Dora Akunyili, the
Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration Control, NAFDAC, is fighting one of the fiercest fights since she became the boss of the federal agency.
Trouble started when, two weeks or so ago she closed down the Onitsha Drug Market. Located around the Niger Bridge Head, this market ranks amongst the most notorious in the West African sub-region. It is reputed to be the capital of all fake drug traffickers. Every fake drug dealer in Nigeria, according to NAFDAC sources, is a graduate of the Onitsha drug market. Ever since Akunyili took over at NAFDAC, she has pursued with passion, unparalled zeal, and patriotism, her brief to rid Nigeria of fake drugs. In carrying out this brief, she has, a couple of times, come face to face with death. Her children have not been spared the trauma. Her son, a student of Igbiniedon Secondary School, Okada, denied her as his mother when the children of the merchants of death cornered him with an intent to harm him. He declared his mother “my uncle's wife.” He was spared, and was quickly spirited out of the country.
But Akunyili has remained steadfast. Her confidence stems from the fact that she is fighting a just war.
For indeed, the fight against fake drug merchants is a war. They are merchants of death. They are worse than armed robbers. Often times, armed robbers are kind enough not to kill. They are worse than assassins. Assassins kill a few when sent by the devils. Armed robbers and assassins hardly kill children and babies. But fake drug merchants are mass murderers. They kill in thousands. They kill babies, children, youths, mothers, pregnant women, fathers and grand parents. They have no mercy. They have no conscience. I have always wondered why fake drug merchants go free, while armed robbers are hanged, or tied to the stake and shot. Surely, no group is as dangerous as these guys. It is these guys that Akunyili and NAFDAC staff are fighting empty-handed. This fight, by the way, is our collective fight. It is not just NAFDAC’s fight. Or Dora Akinuyili’s. It is our fight, a just fight to save our lives from conscienceless merchants of death. Which is why I am a bit taken aback by a few reactions from otherwise respectable people since NAFDAC closed down the notorious Onitsha drug market about two weeks ago.
For the records, Onitsha drug market is not the first drug market NAFDAC had closed down. It had closed down those of Aba, Lagos and Kano. When NAFDAC closed those markets down, heavens did not fall. But that of Ontisha, like anything in Anambra State, has turned into something else. NAFDAC did not close that market for the fun of it. It closed it down to stop the mass murderers. While the existence of fake drugs has gone down in Nigeria, it has continued to go up in Onitsha. The Onitsha drug market has continued to contribute to the mass murder of Nigerians. Based on close monitoring, NAFDAC closed down the market to audit the drug stores. That was the crime it committed.
Two weeks after the closure, about 50 per cent of the stores have been audited. Out of that, over 40 lorry loads of fake drugs have been discovered and evacuated. And the type of drugs discovered is mind-boggling. There are lorry loads of “Novalgene” which turned out to be panadol. There are lorry loads of Artesunat (a malaria drug) which turned out to be a low dose chloroquine. There are bad copies of “Herbal Viagra” which package is raw pornography. There are lorry loads of Oxytocin, a labour-inducing drug, which is also taken after delivery to stop bleeding, which turned out to be fake. So, who knows how many pregnant women and those who had just delivered this fake Oxytocin had killed? There are lorry-loads of Norvasac, an anti-hypertension drug which turned out to be fake. And there are lorry loads of fake Septrin, Tetanus Toxide, Ventolin, Onaxo (a drug which had been banned for years now because it causes liver injury.) There were lorry loads of a drug called Oral blood (There is no drug like that) which the merchants of death say “Regulates the fat of blood and increases the density of blood.” Haba! And there are lots more.
Now, it is for these callous, God forsaken people that Akunyili is being threatened and harassed. Predictably, the traders are up in arms. But the most shocking attack came from Obele Chuka, the former chairman of the Onitsha branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA. In a most reckless reaction, Chuka advised Onitsha drug traders to chase away the "invaders". He said the closure of the market was “a pre-meditated and collective detention of the entire Igbo race." Now, this is interesting. How come a lawyer would resort to childish ethnic sentiments in a serious matter? But he has not finished yet. He goes to the ridiculous, and urges town unions in Anambra State and Ohanaeze Ndigbo to declare Akunyili a persona-non-grata if she fails to, within two days, identify and isolate deadly drug fakers, unseal the market and arraign the felons.”
The questions to ask Chuka, and those who think like him are: Is Chuka more Igbo than Akunyili? Would Chuka rather Akunyili kept quiet, because she is Igbo, while Ndigbo and other Nigerians died in their thousands? Who is Chuka protecting? Persona-non-grata? I think it is the merchants of death and those who are fighting for, and protecting them, that Ndigbo should declare persona-non-grata in Igboland. For, they wish Ndigbo death, nothing more.
As for the Onitsha drug market, Ndigbo should, with one voice, say no to evil. They should, with one voice, support their daughter who has made them proud nationally and internationally. They must help cleanse Igboland by chasing the merchants of death out of their land. Ndigbo are not known to condone evil. And when the chips are down, it is our lives that are at stake. Yes.
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