Introduction;

It is rather disturbing that a city of such excellent pedigree as Aba would be in the news for very bad reasons at a time as this when it is obvious that the state government under the leadership of Dr. Alex Otti is doing so much to redeem the image of the blessed city.

National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and control (NAFDAC) must be commended at this time for at least taking up the initiative to carry out its seemingly annual surveillance operations which has helped them seize counterfeited goods worth about five (5) billion naira.

Probable Innovations to be considered;

At a time where Nigerian people are dying off randomly from all manner of organ damage or failure, NAFDAC must understand that the volume of responsibility on their desk which must be aimed at sanitizing the society of merchants of counterfeited goods, is dire and enormous.

As a result of this, NAFDAC must start showing examples publicly with market leaders who make promises to prevent such from happening the markets they control but never keep to such promises. The Eziukwu market leaders that signed a document a year ago to combat such in their market must be used to set examples because if they had done their jobs, such would not happen under their watch.

There ought to be a massive social media wide campaign to sensitize the masses about these arrays of counterfeited products while providing them with good confidential options/channels to lodge their reports when citizens suspect a product to be fake or a facility being used for production of fake products.

This war against the production of fake products cannot be won by NAFDAC alone, they need the buy in of the masses, state governments, local governments and a whole lot more people for them to succeed in this war.

With the successful operation at Eziukwu market Aba in December 2024, there should be well spelt out approach to bring everyone involved with the syndicate to justice within the shortest possible time.

The laws guiding the operation of NAFDAC should be reviewed to offer them the best support they would ever need from the legislature to carry out their mandate.

Conclusion;

We as Nigerians know that we live with the fake product’s pandemic reality but unfortunately, we seem hopeless and helpless at this point because it seems to take so much to get the attention of NAFDAC when we have well established concerns about products suspected to be fake.

We hope to see a NAFDAC that promptly responds to tags and mentions on social media platforms especially when it has to do with alerting them about fake products being circulated in the market.

The various state governments through its agencies must also collaborate with NAFDAC to make their various states uncomfortable for these types of trades to thrive.

The increased rates of cancer, kidney failure and all other sorts of diseases killing so many Nigerians if well investigated can be traced to terrible products being sold in the market. For a nation with an unusual poor healthcare delivery infrastructure, we must invest so much in preventive care than curative approach to healthcare services.

While we commend NAFDAC on this seeming annual styled operation, we hope to have this happen more often with the culprits being diligently prosecuted in our courts to serve as deterrents to others who may contemplate such fast-paced style of making money at the expense of human lives.