The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control has warned manufacturers and dealers in regulated products to desist from producing and selling fake and substandard items.

The South East Zonal Director of the agency, Martins Iluyomade, issued the warning at a stakeholders’ meeting on Friday in Owerri, Imo State.

The meeting was organised by the state Director of the agency, Mercy Ndukwe, for the officials of various associations that deal in NAFDAC-regulated products in the state.

Mr Iluyomade said the agency was poised to ensure that products manufactured and sold in the country were locally and internationally certified as standard.

He urged the officials to ensure that the quality of products they rolled out during production inspection were the same they sell to Nigerians without being supervised.

“NAFDAC is now going beyond testing your products only at the production inspection stage. We have constituted a committee that goes into the markets to purchase any product of our choice for our personal analysis. With our findings, we have closed down four different companies that were found wanting in maintaining standards. So, it will no longer be business as usual for if we get it right among ourselves, Nigeria will no longer be seen as a dumping ground for all kinds of fake and substandard products,” Mr Iluyomade said.

He advised them to always make the wellbeing of the people their priority rather than going after money-making to the detriment of the people’s health.

Mr Iluyomade said that the manufacturers and sellers of NAFDAC regulated products were the most critical sector of the Nigerian economy and that no matter the country’s economic situation, people would always have need for food, water and medicine.

He urged the participants at the meeting to remember that they were not allowed to sell any products not certified by NAFDAC, even the ones procured from outside the country.

According to him, some of the products imported were substandard and so should be properly checked before use.

He assured them that the “new NAFDAC administration” would do its best to protect their interest and not fail to punish those whose stock in trade was to make others cry.

Speaking earlier, the state Director of NAFDAC, Mercy Ndukwe, said the essence of the meeting was to collaborate with the stakeholders and intimate them with the activities of the agency for the year.

Mr Ndukwe also said that the meeting was aimed at ensuring that the stakeholders did not ignorantly default against NAFDAC guidelines, while going about their businesses.

She also assured them of more meetings “not just for the executives of the associations but all the members of each of the associations.’’

In a remark, the state Chairman of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Dr Norbert Ajero, promised that members would continue to do their best to support the activities of the agency.

Mr Ajero, a former Special Assistant to Governor Hope Uzodimma on Health, expressed the need for NAFDAC to look into some of the training it conducted for them last year.

He urged the agency to bring those trained on board.

He also appealed to the zonal director of the agency to look into the issue of NAFDAC’s administrative challenges hindering the sale of imported drugs yet to be certified by the agency.

He said that most of the drugs were service drugs needed for emergencies, adding that having to wait for it to be authenticated by the agency before it could be sold had made it scarce in the country.

In a lecture, the state’s Principal Regulatory Officer of the agency, Mr Obinna Okonkwo, took the participants through the “use of NAFDAC automated products administration and monitoring systems portal.’’

Mr Okonkwo spoke on how the stakeholders could seamlessly go through the registration process with their cell phones.

(NAN)