The Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, said a total debt of N3.2 billion naira the agency owed on its takeover ago about four years, was liquidated barely a year after taking office. .

Prof. Adeyeye made the statement as the agency has just put 73 new HILUX personnel utility vehicles, sedans and buses into service to improve operational efficiency.

She said she had taken excruciating cost cutting measures which had earned her many amusing appellations from staff such as ‘we can save 1 million naira on this request of 5 million naira to buy a vehicle “, among others.

“The money we have saved is the money we use for what we need and not for what we want,” she said, adding that “when we spend money on , the nation suffers the consequences”. Not just the nation now, our staff will suffer the consequences. ”

“That’s why we started saving money despite the fact that I came across a debt of 3.2 billion naira. And in one year, we paid 3.01 billion naira.

Prof Adeyeye revealed that the Agency is currently going through its World Health Organization audit and is being judged on seven regulatory functions or a group of activities.

She added: “There is a big area called regulatory inspection. This includes visiting companies to see if they are complying with their good manufacturing practices.

“These are vehicles that will take our staff there.

According to her, the regulatory inspection includes good distribution practices, which means that all distributors who handle NAFDAC-regulated products must be visited to see where these products are kept if they will decompose before arriving at home. the retailer.

She recalled how the Agency managed to bust a syndicate that brought 30 containers of tramadol into the country about three years ago thanks to a whistleblower from the presidency.

She said the Agency’s port inspection officers kept vigil for days at the ports before consignments worth more than 2 trillion naira were apprehended and the contents destroyed.

Professor Adeyeye said: “The containers were labeled for bonded terminals. We couldn’t have done it. These are vehicles that the agents of the Directorate of Inspection used to monitor these ports.

The agency chief said the provision of the vehicles would put a permanent end to “the practice hitherto of customers bringing their vehicles to ferry agency staff on site for inspection”.

Under these circumstances, the inspection exercise proposed by NAFDAC is already compromised ab-initio when the staff of a regulatory body would have to depend on their customers to transport them to the factory to be inspected.

A statement signed by NAFDAC’s resident media consultant, Sayo Akintola, in Lagos on Sunday explained that 20 Toyota Camry 2021 marks for some directors have been ordered from Abuja, while 10 Coaster and 60-seat Hummer buses have been ordered from Abuja. agency’s Oshodi office complex.

Forty-three Hilux vans have been ordered from the Investigations and Enforcement Branch in Apapa to improve the Agency’s enforcement and inspection and regulatory activities.

”Our staff deserve the best. And the welfare of our staff is our priority,” she said, adding that the four (4) Coaster buses and six (6) Toyota Hiace buses put into service in Oshodi would serve as staff buses for make life more comfortable for workers on their daily commute to and from the office,” the NAFDAC boss said.

The DG further explained that officials from the Investigations and Enforcement Directorate would use the utility vehicles to pursue peddlers of contraband and counterfeit goods in nooks and crannies of the country, adding, “This is not a luxury for us. This is not the end. Each state should have at least three Hilux vehicles.

Professor Adeyeye also noted that the new vehicles would be useful for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Directorate officials tasked with inspecting food, water and related products to verify their safety for human consumption. with customers scattered all over the country.

”About 70 percent of our business is field work. These are vehicles they need. Before I arrived, companies sent vehicles to come and inspect them. Who does not know that this is the end of this inspection in terms of integrity? she asked rhetorically.

During commissioning, the agency’s upper management took turns praising the DG for taking the bull by the horns in tackling the perennial problem of a lack of commercial vehicles to do the regulatory work. . “I have spent more than two decades at NAFDAC, and I have never seen anything like it before,” said the overjoyed Mr. Emmanuel Nwogu who represented the Director of Administration and Human Resources, Mr. Joseph Aina.

He said that with the provision of four Coaster buses and six Toyota Hiace buses for staff, no member of staff has reason to report late for work without appropriate sanctions.

”We bought vehicles. But I have never seen this kind of thing in my more than two decades at NAFDAC where 43 Hiluxes, 20 Camry cars and ten buses would be purchased in one day,” he said.

Likewise, the Directors of the Port Inspection and Investigations and Enforcement Directorates, Prof. Samson Adebayo and Attorney Kingsley Ejiofor, described Prof. Adeyeye as a blessing not only to NAFDAC but also to Nigeria as a whole.

They both revealed that she brought an uncommon transformation to the Agency which they say was going downhill the moment she joined NAFDAC.