No director had laptop by 2017- NAFDAC DG

The Director General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Mojisola Adeyeye, on Friday, revealed that no single director of the agency had a laptop as at 2017 when she assumed duty officially.

Adeyeye said, “It’s worth publicising that we have over 140 vehicles over the last five years that we have purchased to do our work. No director had a laptop when I got to NAFDAC. Laptop is almost like exercise books now. It’s almost like a telephone to the world, so to say communication.”

She made this revelation while delivering her speech at the beginning of the South-West zonal media sensitisation workshop on, “Dangers of Bleaching Creams and Regulatory Control, tagged: I’m Black and Proud”.

The event was held at the House of Chiefs Hall, Agodi Secretariat in Ibadan, Oyo State.

Speaking further, the NAFDAC boss said she never placed any priority on vehicles when she assumed duty because she met about N3.2billion debt on the ground.

She said, “I met a debt of N3.2billion in NAFDAC. No vehicles, no computers, no equipment in the laboratory, so there were some things that needed to be done first. It’s money that brought us here in Ibadan. It’s vehicles that brought us to this plac. I remembered when I first joined, one of my pilot vehicles broke down on the road because at that time, we were still paying debts and my priority was not to get a new vehicle for myself.”

On the effect of bleaching creams, Adeyeye said it was harmful as it would result in cancer, slowly building up in the body, damage to vital organs of the body and skin irritation among others.

NAFDAC boss explained that the workshop was as a result of the resolution of the Senate to take a decisive action on it.

“Last year, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha acting on the resolutions of the Senate wrote to NAFDAC stressing the need to take stringent regulatory actions to stem the dangerous tide of rampant and pervasive cases of Nigerians using bleaching creams.

“We immediately took some decisive steps such as sensitisation of the public through different media outlets, enforcement through intelligence and raids in trade fair complexes that have resulted in large seizures and destruction of violative products. One of such sensitisation actions was the commencement of media sensitisation workshops organised for journalists in Abuja, Lagos and Kano.

“Today’s sensitisation workshop is, therefore, a fulfilment of my promise to cascade it to the six geopolitical zones in the country as a deliberate strategy of mobilising, educating, sensitising, and challenging Nigerian health journalists to play frontline roles in our concerted efforts to eradicate the menace of bleaching creams and needless waste of scarce resources in Nigeria,” she stressed.

In her welcome address, the zonal director of the agency, Roseline Ajayi, said the purpose of the training was to sensitise journalists to the danger of bleaching cream and regulate measures to control the misuse of bleaching creams in Nigeria.