The Chairman, Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN), Professor Ahmed Tijjani Mora, has lamented that there is no single pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in the entire North Eastern part of the country.
He said the problem has serious implications on drug security and local production in the country with over 200 million people.
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Mora was speaking at the 12th annual symposium and business summit organised by Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria (NAIP) held in Kano yesterday.
He said, “It is a very serious problem and it borders on medical security. In the northern part of the country and the FCT, there are only two states that can be said to be doing well; Kano and Kwara.
“Like I said, in 2001, I made an observation that in the entire North East, there wasn’t a single state with a pharmaceutical industry, whether owned by the government or private individuals.
“It is now over 21 years, but the story is still the same. And the population of the two states is larger than that of many countries in Africa,” he lamented.
He then challenged NAIP leadership to address the challenge so as to reduce Nigeria’s drug importation, which he said stood at between 70 and 80 per cent.
Earlier speaking, NAIP President, Ken Inuegbu, said the association has been pushing for promotion of drugs self-sufficiency in the country.
He said the association is in full support of the pharmaceutical regulatory agencies’ effort of sanitising the sector from counterfeit and substandard drugs.