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The Onitsha Drug Market, Anambra state is yet to open for business activities more than 15 days reopening date, and after one month of closure by National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
The market was a ghost area when BusinessDay visited it on Friday.
Reacting, Mr Ndubuisi Chukwuleta, Chairman of the drug market, however, said the issue is being resolved by the leadership with NAFDAC to enable them go back to business.
He appealed to the aggrieved members to exercise patience as all the bottlenecks is being resolved for better days ahead.
Mr Martins Iluyomade, the South East zonal director of the agency, had revealed that the market would be reopened on March 7, after a meeting between officials of the agency, officials of the Anambra State government and leaders of market unions on March 6.
He said that business would officially commence in the markets on March 7.
Other markets including plumbing materials market, timber market, surgical materials market, science laboratory materials market and many others, were affected early last month when the agency closed down the market in its fight against illicit drugs.
Iluyomade who addressed government officials and leaders of the market before announcing the reopening said: “What is happening here goes beyond only Ogbogwu (drug) market, it extends to other markets around this area, and that was why we took the steps we did by closing down everywhere.
“I know the apprehension was much and people were asking why lock other markets that have nothing to do with drugs, and it was as if we were out to punish those who had nothing to do with drugs. We did not respond because we did not want to join issues, but we found drugs in all the markets we closed,” he said then.
Read also: NAFDAC reopens Onitsha drug market, seizes 50 trailers of illicit drugs
“What we found in other adjoining markets was just as much as we found in Ogbogwu market. We did what we did because if we did not, we would not cover the grounds we were able to cover.
“This is a sad story the number of narcotics we have found here. The people dealing in it know the effect, but they are doing it because people say the sale of narcotics is more lucrative than cocaine.
“We have also seen people who deliberately go and bring substandard and fake drugs. People import tablets in nylon bags with no label and they will bring it here and put it in packs and put label on them for sale. We saw a lot of it. We saw medicine that had been banned as far back as 2007, but people are stocking it.
“Many of them were banned because they cause cancer, and new replacement produced, but people still stock them. That is wickedness. Another category is unregistered drugs. The volume of those medicines are usually small on the counter, but has large cache of them in warehouses outside the market.” he said.
Meanwhile, some traders were not happy with the situation of things as most of them have been out of business for months.
Some of them who spoke out their minds and did not want their names in the print, said that NAFDAC should have identified the culprits dealing on unwholesome, unregistered and expired drugs and punished them legally instead of shottingdown the entire drug market.
“We are out of business for months from the day NAFDAC begun their raid and inspections in the market and till today the market is yet to be opened.
“We were not involved as they invaded our shops, removed many drugs both good, unregistered and unwholesome with other things without our presence in our shops when their searching for fake drugs were going on.
“If they have identified and found the guilty drug fakers, they should single them out and punished them, let the genuine one be allowed to open their shops for business.
They alleged that NAFDAC had imposed N2million fine for every trader in the market to pay before they would be allowed to open their shops.
One of the traders said that the Chairman in a meeting of the stakeholders last week brought a non letter headed paper where NAFDAC had directed that the fine must be paid to the agency before they can allow the shops to be opened.
“The document was not in the NAFDAC letter head paper and suspicious, and we asked the chairman to explain. We even accused the chairman that he is the one forging the document and brought to us to sign for the payment of the fine. We are still waiting for his explanation.
“We appealed for the state government intervention for NAFDAC to reopen the market for business activities,” he said.
