Nigerian drug control agency wants death penalty for peddlers

The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mojisola Adeyeye, has made a strong case for the death penalty for drug peddlers, arguing that lenient punishments allow the circulation of fake and dangerous medicines to persist.

Speaking on The Morning Brief on Channels Television on Friday, Adeyeye highlighted the devastating impact of substandard and falsified drugs, particularly on children.

“You don’t need to put a gun to a child’s head to kill them. Just give them bad medicine,” she stated.

Her comments followed a shocking discovery: “In the same shopping mall, one person sold children’s medicine for N13,000, while another sold the same product for N3,000.

“When NAFDAC tested the cheaper version at its Kaduna laboratory, they found it contained no active ingredients—just a worthless and potentially dangerous placebo.

“That raised an alarm,” Adeyeye said. “So, I want the death penalty.”

She expressed frustration over the inadequacy of current laws in deterring criminals profiting from fake drugs. Citing a case where a trafficker was caught with 225mg of Tramadol—a dangerously high dose that could cause fatal harm—she noted that the maximum penalty was just a five-year prison term or a N250,000 fine.

“Who doesn’t know that a person can simply withdraw N250,000 from an ATM?” she asked, emphasizing how ineffective such fines are against those running lucrative counterfeit drug operations.

Adeyeye stressed that NAFDAC cannot tackle the issue alone, urging the judiciary and the National Assembly to impose stricter penalties, including the death sentence, for those distributing lethal counterfeit drugs.

“So, our judicial system must be strong enough. We are working with the National Assembly to make our penalties much stiffer. But if you kill a child with bad medicine, you deserve to die,” she declared.