The National Agency For Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said it has discovered a major cause of treatment failure and why most drugs are no longer effective. To understand more, calm your nerve and take a reading trip with New Telegraph to Umummeje village, in Umuocheala community, Amaitoli Clan, Osisioma Local Government Area, near Aba, the commercial hub of Abia State.
Without suspicion on the existence of this horrible place, one can easily admire the beautiful construction works at Aba Section of the Enugu-Port Harcourt Highway, as one drives through the popular Ariaria Junction.
On getting to the magnificent St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Abayi-Ariaria, take a turn to your right to Umuocheala Road, make two further turns and behold this large compound with magnificent two-storey building, boys’ quarters and four other bungalows where human lives sacrificed for unwholesome profit.
With the village setting surrounded by suburban environment, it will only take impeccable intelligence that is beyond mere intuition to unravel what is happening in what is arguably up to four plots of land with massive buildings full of expired drugs and machines use for re-validation and printing of new labels for onward distribution to various distributors of death inside markets in Aba and other parts of Nigeria.
On Tuesday, 11th February 2025, a joint team of the National Agency For Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Nigerian Army, Nigeria Police and the Department of State Services (DSS) after a thorough investigation stormed the venue and bursted a scene that is arguably the biggest fake and expired drugs factory and depot in South-East Nigeria.
The Director General of NAFDAC, South-East Zone, Pharmacist Martins Iluyomade, said the discovery of two-storey twin-duplex, a Boys Quarters and several bungalows filled to the brim with expired foreign drugs is one he has never seen in all his years of work.
“Honestly, I’m shut of words with what I’m seeing here because I kept seeing more rooms filled with expired drugs. I feel like crying when I saw so many expired anti hypotensives.
“Imagine somebody who already has hypertension who was asked to buy expensive foreign drugs. On getting to the market, he pays someone a huge some of money to buy his death quickly. Honestly, those who do this deserve something worst.”
Speaking further, Iluyomade said, “One of the shocking thing here is that some of the expired drugs are newly purchased with their new cartons. We’re seeing an odd and strange system here where people specialize in dealing with expired products or people who have expired products will invite someone notorious in handling such to repackage and give back for public consumption.
“What we’ve seen here are foreign drugs, very expensive foreign drugs that one cannot buy anyhow. To be frank with you, we cannot quantify what’s here for now because the entire building without a space left is filled with expired drugs.
“To make sense of what we’re saying here, you all saw the same machine we saw that’s used to make packaging of expired products in a new form and make it re-validated. We saw where labels of expired products and removed with a similar label produced for revalidation.
“So, to put you through, this place is like a depot for expired foreign drugs. And it’s also has a mini factory where the rebranding of expired drugs takes place through the production of new labels with new expired dates placed on them.”
When asked if any form of arrest has been made on suspects, Iluyomade said, “an arrest has been made. The police have arrested a few people and they’re with the police, but the main suspect, who is the owner of this place, is on the run.
“Even when he was called and told that his family is with the security agents, he surprisingly didn’t care and said they can hold the family.
“The law will surely take its course because everything you see here now has become a scene of crime. The building, the vehicles and everything here are pieces of evidence at this scene of crime.”
