By Joyce Ekeh
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, is creating a nationwide reserve of pharmacists that can be mobilised during drug recalls, counterfeit medicine alerts and public health emergencies, in a move aimed at closing gaps in the country’s regulatory surveillance system.
The agency has enrolled 600 pharmacists already working in different fields into its Pharmacists Reserve Volunteer Programme, PRVP, giving NAFDAC access to a pool of trained professionals who can be deployed to support regulatory operations across the country.
The initiative is significant because NAFDAC’s regulatory challenge goes beyond its laboratories and ports of entry. The agency is expected to monitor medicines and other regulated products circulating through thousands of markets, pharmacies, patent medicine stores and health facilities across Nigeria.
Explaining the thinking behind the programme, NAFDAC Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, said the agency could not adequately protect Nigerians if regulation remained concentrated in the nation’s major centres.
“Regulation that lives only in the capital cannot protect a nation of more than two hundred million people,” Adeyeye said.
“The Programme is how we take regulation to the doorstep of the Nigerian people.”
The 600 pharmacists were drawn from all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, with representation from the six geopolitical zones.
Adeyeye said the ultimate objective was to establish a standing pool of trained, vetted and readily mobilisable pharmacists in every state who could work alongside NAFDAC’s state offices.
She said the volunteers could be called upon at short notice when a product recall is required, falsified medicines are suspected to be circulating or an emergency occurs in a hard-to-reach community.
“This is more than an internship or an attachment. It is an investment in you, and through you, in the regulatory future of this country,” she said.
The pharmacists are expected to support areas including pharmacovigilance, post-market surveillance, compliance monitoring, quality assurance, data collection, public sensitisation and enforcement-related activities.
But while expanding its regulatory reach, NAFDAC is also placing a major responsibility on the volunteers, warning that the success of the initiative will depend on their integrity.
Adeyeye said regulators would inevitably encounter attempts to influence their decisions and urged the pharmacists not to compromise their professional responsibilities.
“As patriotic Nigerians, I admonish you to reject such offers. The moment a regulator can be bought, the public loses its only protection,” she said.
She also warned the volunteers against leaking confidential information obtained during inspections and investigations, particularly through social media.
Adeyeye said the pharmacists would be expected to maintain confidentiality, respond promptly when deployed, document their work properly and treat members of the public with respect.
“You will enter markets, pharmacies and health facilities as ambassadors of NAFDAC and of the pharmacy profession. Conduct yourselves accordingly,” she said.
Coordinator of the PRVP and Director, Narcotics and Controlled Substances, Dr Momodu Omamegbe Rametu, said the initiative had moved rapidly from a call for expressions of interest to the creation of a national pool of 600 pharmacists.
He described the programme as a backup system designed to strengthen citizen participation in regulation, post-marketing surveillance and drug-demand reduction activities.
Coordinator of the NAFDAC Training School, Dr Tunde Sigbeku, said the volunteers would be trained in post-market surveillance, pharmacovigilance, antimicrobial resistance prevention, inspection and enforcement, narcotics and controlled substances, as well as drug-abuse prevention.
He said they would also support surveillance intelligence gathering and research.
“This is the first time the Agency is having a backup or a reserve of foot soldiers across the country to help us in the battle against fake drugs and substandard products,” Sigbeku said.
Adeyeye said the programme would also provide the pharmacists with practical regulatory experience and professional certification, while creating a national network that could support their careers.
But the bigger test, she stressed, would be whether the new reserve could translate into stronger surveillance where Nigerians actually buy and use medicines.
“To our six hundred volunteers: you carry today not just a certificate of enrollment, but a pledge to serve with integrity, to represent NAFDAC and your profession with honour, and to place the safety of the Nigerian public above every other consideration,” she said.
