The traumatic experience of the late Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Dora Akunyili from 2001 to 2008, has made the agency a banana skin or, better still, a trap waiting to hurt occupants of that office.
As expected by President Olusegun Obasanjo, who approved Akunyili’s appointment based on recommendation of her discipline and unbending principle, the Anambra State-born confronted the monstrous obstacles to effectiveness of the NAFDAC to rid the nation of masses of counterfeit drugs and poisonous foods.
Armed with her employers support, she led and took the fight to the doorsteps of dealers who are said to have made billions of naira from importation and warehousing drugs and other consumables dangerous to public health.
While Akunyili earned accolades and bagged awards, her life was, however, on the line culminating into the assassination attempt she escaped on December 26, 2003 in her homestate.
Bullets ostensibly targeted at her head only touched her scarf and the rest is history. She died on June 7, 2014 from cancer at age 59.
The current Director-General of the agency, Mojisola Adeyeye, also a Professor, was expected to have digested Akunyili’s history in her United States of America base before she returned home and put on the big shoes. She was reading updates about weak drugs regulation which, she said, had brought shame to the image of her father’s land. She then thought she had what was required to do some things differently to fix the problem and escape the fate of Akunyili in the office.
However, here she is today, lamenting about the complexities of running the agency to cleanse the country of the stigma and compete favourably with other nations that were serious in regulating foods, drinks and drugs consumed by their citizens.
On her assumption of duty in 2017, what welcomed her into the office was a debt of over N3.2 billions and a near dead laboratory resting in an intensive care unit. But coming from a system which forbids such practice of default to business partners of the agency, she ensured the debt was paid, even though, a new DG, under unwritten law, is said not to be duty bound to settle inherited debts.
“After these years in the office, madam has not blended or has refused to blend with the system. She carries on as if she was in the Western world where she came from. I am even surprised that she survives till date since 2017. She must be a strong woman who is difficult to suppress,” a source hinted.
TheTabloid.net gathered that the DG, in her own way, has walked the path of Akunyili in her insistence in transparent operations, zero tolerance to favouritism and other anti-ethics tendencies in the agency. This act labelled stubborness against the business as usual, is said to have won her more adversaries than friends within and outside the agency, particularly when it seemed substandard pharmaceutical products and contaminated foods dominate and rule Nigerian markets, thereby exposing unsuspecting populace to harms.
It was also learnt that between June and November 2022, the NAFDAC staff went on an industrial action alleged to have been instigated to embarrass the DG so that she won’t be given a second term tenure by the late President Muhammadu Buhari. She survived. In October 2024, the staff again embarked on indefinite strike over what they called unmet demands on salary arrears of employees from 2022, 2024 promotion examination results, reparation allowances and others.
Secretary of the Trade Union Congress, Dr Ejor Michael, said the NAFDAC management’s deaf ear to the staff demands informed the strike action.
He said, “This decision is a result of NAFDAC Management’s failure to address the critical issues outlined in the communiqué within the given time frame.”
The DG, in her response, said the agency had no power over promotion, clarifying “we are not in charge of people to promote; we are only responsible for conducting exams.”
Adeyeye added, “It is not that there is a vacancy, and we are not promoting. The government approves vacancies every year, depending on what they can pay for.”
For paying the agency’s contractors their outstandings, she is accused of corrupt practices through alleged collection of bribes from the contractors. But at a Press Conference she hosted on Monday, September 7, she was unambigous in her disclaim of the allegation, asking contractors in possession of detailed account of her behind-the-curtain deals with them to expose her to the world.
She charged, “Any contractor I have demanded money from should come out.”
At the press briefing, her counternance spoke her mind; she went with a mindset to confront any offensive thrown at her with relevant and verifiable statistics. This informed her extensive explanation on her accomplishments against oddities she had coped with.
The DG reiterated that accepting the NAFDAC job was service to the nation after her retirement in the US where, according to her, she had worked for 34 years, hence her determination to transform the image of the agency, consequently earning it what is called an international respect and a seat in global regulatory rankings.
She explained that to her credit was the NAFDAC becoming an affiliate member of the International Medical Regulatory Forum since 2023 and joining the International Council for Harmonisation in 2025.
“By March 2022, we became a maturity level 3 Agency, the third in Africa. Countries now respect us. Regulatory agencies respect us. In my first two years, I was going round doing image-making, rebuilding our bad image. They were calling NAFDAC ‘good for nothing agency’. Somebody told me, ‘Oh, we used to call NAFDAC a good-for-nothing agency. Congratulations, you are now maturity level 3,’” she affirmed.
When a reporter rose and asked her of when she would throw in the towel, she was quick to tell the reporter to go back and update his sponsor with a message that nothing and nobody would force her to resign before the expiry date of her tenure.
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