Editorial
NAFDAC’s N700,000 on Onitsha drug market traders: What manner of extortion?
On Friday, May 23, 2025, a video surfaced on the social media showing Martins Vincent Otse, celebrated media influencer, otherwise known as Very Dark Man (VDM), with a group of young men at the Head Bridge, Onitsha home to the popular Onitsha Drug Market, which is reputed, like its parent Onitsha Main Market, to be the largest market in Africa, to be the biggest market for all sorts of medicines in the sub-continent.
Apparently frustrated by their ugly fate in the hand of the National Agency for Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), they had reached out to Otse, who seems to have carved the niche of the voice of the powerless and oppressed in Nigeria – a clime where such voices now appear scant and far in-between even against an obviously bourgeoning sequence of official bad behaviours.
What is in issue? In February 2025, the agency had invaded the market and shut it down without warning, in one of the biggest operations of its anti-fake drug campaigns in recent years. During the operation, all the more than 5,000 shops were sealed. But intriguingly, if not strangely, the body did not only shut down the shops selling all manner of medicines, but also the ancillary markets – building materials, textiles, upholstery and all.
Expectedly, not only were the hundreds of thousands of traders directly linked to the primary trade of drugs were suddenly shut out of business but thousands more involved in support services – food vendors, hairdressers, hawkers, shoe-shiners and other artisans populating the market as the source of their daily bread, were equally denied the space.
Amid the hues and cries, Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State, who had had to manage the same situation at a point when it was his remit as the Chief Executive, visited in solidarity with the traders and made a point that while it was apposite and critical for NAFDAC to carry out the operation, it must be done with human face.
For instance, he wondered what offence the ancillary agents in the market committed to warrant the closure of their businesses since they were not directly involved in the drug business, the raison d’etre for the agency’s operation, urging the body to consider the collateral damage in the number of families that could go without food, since many of them depend on daily incomes.
He argued instead that a complete closure not being the best option, the operation could go pari passu with those not in the immediate radar of the agency carrying out their businesses. But NAFDAC not only thumbed its nose at the suggestion, but had an ally in Charles Chukwuma Soludo, who rushed to Onitsha from Awka, so soon after to give fillip to its decision for the market to remain closed.
Now, it was obvious that the incumbent governor was sold to the counter arguments of the agency, one of which was that since the drug traders were hiding their fake products in the shops of the other traders in the market a total shutdown was the only option to achieving a complete cleaning up of the market and saving Nigerians from the sure death the evil traders were feeding them.
In fact, the daily reports of the seizure of fake drugs – some of them said to be some of the world’s most dangerous coupled with other eerier tales, which accentuated the cries of danger – to the extent that the suggestion of death sentence by Mojisola Adeyeye, Director General of the agency was easily bought by Nigerians, not only underscored the supposedly stark realities of the situation, but swallowed the feeble voices of the traders in the market that the operation was far something else and that the world was being sold a dummy.
Now, what is the situation that brought in VDM into the picture? The traders in that video episode, revealed that NAFDAC has ordered each of them to pay a whopping N700,000 as condition precedent to reopen every shop. A quick calculation puts the total figure the agency could generate from the traders to well over N3.5billion for the 5,000 plus shops.
What is this money for? This was the question Otse asked the agency in that outing. Incidentally, not even the traders could offer any reason adduced by the regulatory body to make such a demand. To convince Nigerians that they are not lying, some of the traders, who had already paid, displayed receipts issued by the agency as proof.
Incidentally, what the world which had watched NAFDAC regale it with the terribly sordid tales of the atrocities of these evil merchants of death, is to come out with the final report of its investigation. This includes not only establishing where the truck-loads of the so-called fake drugs the excavated from these shops ended, but a disclosure of those involved.
Where are the culprits of this dangerous escapade and the drugs running into trillions of Naira, by its own admission? Three months is more than enough for NAFDAC to have broken its silence on the state of its operation. NAFDAC is not a private body as to claim that it has no obligation to make full public disclosure of its activities.
It becomes even more germane with this N700,000 revelation coming into the picture. We dare ask again, what is it for? Is it operational fee for cleaning up the market? Is it a penalty for the traders not doing the job hitherto? Is it official or the underwater deal in exchange for the traders to continue business as usual?
Well, for now, it is better to adopt the option of circumspection until NAFDAC speaks on the matter. For all anyone could tell, the traders, might just be lying or skewing the tales to suit their own purposes or undermine the reputation of the agency, which has in the past posted a stellar performance in making Nigerian health system safer.
But we demand however that this reaction must be fast and immediate. Nigerians cannot wait and silent is not golden at this time. There had been many tales from the traders imputing that the regulatory agency is not smelling roses. For instance, it has been said that the so-called seized drugs, at the right price, end up back in the hands of their original owners or resold by the operatives who seized them to willing buyers.
In fact, the so-called cleanup operation is seen in many cases as scams, staged to hoodwink the public. It has also been alleged that managers of the agency are hands and feet into the mess of fake drugs business they claim to fight against and official sleaze runs writ-large in their daily affairs.
Aside from the high level of corruption trailing the NAFDAC operation, there is also the claim in high quarters that the instant operation is decked with ethic biases and that it is part of the ethnic-targeting of the current government of the All Progressives Congress (APC) against the Igbo people. This point was clearly made by VDM outing.
It does not lie in our mouth to disclaim or affirm either way. That burden lies with NAFDAC. Clearly, it is not a burden that will not be discharged by keeping silent. There must be clear evidence that it is neither playing hanky-panky as it is wont elsewhere nor targeting certain Nigerians. This must start with adducing cogent and verifiable reason for demanding this N700,000 from traders if actually it did so.
Gladly, those who should speak out already doing so. Tony Nwoye, Senator representing Anambra North at the National Assembly has just called out the agency on the matter, demanding not only the immediate reopening of the shops, but explanation for money, which he sees as extortion.
While we find the intervention of the Senator highly commendable, we also call on Soludo to quickly intervene in the development and ensure that there is full disclosure to ensure that the people he supervises their affairs are not cheated out of their money. As an economist and in fact former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), he should know what it means for a whopping N3.5billion to leave the economy of the state, especially when it goes into private pockets unjustly. We need not say more!
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
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