•NAFDAC director-general, Mojisola Adeyeye
The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has inaugurated a 600-member Pharmacists Reserve Volunteer Programme (PRVP) to strengthen its fight against substandard and falsified medicines.
The PRVP will also help the agency improve its ability to respond to drug-related emergencies across the country, reports The Nation.
NAFDAC Director-General Mojisola Adeyeye disclosed this while inaugurating the pharmacists drawn from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory yesterday.
Adeyeye said the initiative would create a pool of trained and vetted pharmacists who could be mobilised at short notice to support the agency during product recalls, suspected circulation of falsified medicines and emergencies in hard-to-reach communities.
According to her, the programme is part of efforts to take the regulation of medicines closer to Nigerians by strengthening NAFDAC’s presence beyond its laboratories and ports of entry.
She said the 600 pharmacists, who are already working in different fields, were selected through a process that considered merit, availability and geographical representation.
The participants, the NAFDAC boss said, represent all six geopolitical zones of the country.
Adeyeye explained that the programme was not an internship or ordinary attachment, but an initiative designed to develop a national reserve of pharmacists who could provide additional regulatory support when required.
She said the volunteers would be exposed to practical aspects of medicines regulation, including pharmacovigilance, compliance monitoring, quality assurance, data collection and public sensitisation against drug abuse.
The NAFDAC chief added that the programme is intended to strengthen the agency’s regulatory reach at the community level, particularly in markets, community pharmacies, patent medicine stores and primary healthcare centres.
“Regulation that lives only in the capital cannot protect a nation of more than two hundred million people,” she said, stressing that the volunteer programme was designed to take regulation “to the doorstep of the Nigerian people.”
Adeyeye said she hoped that, within the next few years, every state would have a standing pool of trained, vetted and mobilisable pharmacists working alongside NAFDAC state offices.
She said such a structure would enable the agency to respond more effectively when public health risks involving medicines arise.
“When there is a product recall, a suspected circulation of falsified medicines, or an emergency in a hard-to-reach community, we need people who can volunteer for a few hours or days,” she said.
The Director-General, however, warned the volunteers that their effectiveness would depend on discipline, integrity and confidentiality.
She urged them to reject attempts to compromise their work, warning that the consequences of regulatory corruption could directly affect public safety.
“As patriotic Nigerians, reject such offers. The moment a regulator can be bought, the public loses its only protection,” she said.
Adeyeye listed availability and discipline among the conditions expected of the volunteers, saying they must respond promptly whenever called upon for assignments and ensure that their responsibilities are properly completed.
She also cautioned them against disclosing confidential information obtained during inspections and investigations on social media.
“The information you handle during inspections and investigations belongs to the Agency and to the Nigerian people, not to social media,” she said.
The volunteers, she added, were expected to maintain a learning attitude, study NAFDAC guidelines, ask questions and properly document their activities.
She also urged them to respect the communities where they would work, noting that they would represent both NAFDAC and the pharmacy profession during field assignments.
Adeyeye said the programme would also provide professional benefits to the participating pharmacists through practical regulatory experience, training, mentorship and formal documentation of their service.
She said the volunteers would gain exposure to areas including pharmacovigilance reporting, laboratory operations, risk communication and enforcement procedures.
Their service, she added, would be formally documented through certification and letters of service that could strengthen their professional profiles before employers, licensing bodies and postgraduate institutions in Nigeria and abroad.
The programme’s coordinator and Director of Narcotics and Controlled Substances (NCS), Momodu Rametu, said the initiative had developed from a call for expression of interest issued only a few weeks earlier into a national pool of 600 young pharmacists.
Rametu described the PRVP as an organised backup system that would provide supplemental support to NAFDAC in areas including emergency response, post-marketing regulation, drug-demand reduction and citizen participation in regulatory activities.
Also, the Coordinator of the NAFDAC Training School, Tunde Sigbeku, said the volunteers would undergo training to equip them with knowledge of the agency’s regulatory operations.
He said the training would cover post-market surveillance, pharmacovigilance, antimicrobial resistance prevention, veterinary medicines, inspection and enforcement, narcotics and controlled substances, drug abuse and research.
Sigbeku said the volunteers could also contribute to surveillance intelligence gathering, particularly because of their presence across the country.
He described the programme as the first time the agency was establishing a reserve of “foot soldiers” across the country to support its fight against fake and substandard products.
Adeyeye urged NAFDAC directors and state coordinators to take ownership of the volunteers, mentor them and deploy them meaningfully so that the programme would translate into stronger regulatory capacity at the state level.
She formally declared the Pharmacists Reserve Volunteer Programme inaugurated after administering the oath of allegiance to the 600 pharmacists.
The initiative is expected to provide NAFDAC with an additional pool of trained personnel that can be activated during medicine-safety emergencies while simultaneously expanding the agency’s surveillance and public-sensitisation activities at community level.
