President Bola Tinubu, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and drug regulatory agencies have been urged to urgently approve the establishment of a second Coordinated Wholesale Centre (CWC) in Lagos to check imminent threat to equitable medicine distribution.
Chairman, Nigeria Association of Patent and Proprietary Medicine Dealers (NAPPMED), Liberation Zone Idumota Lagos, Osita Nwajide made the call while addressing journalists during a rally organised by the association in Lagos.
Nwajide regretted that the present CWC project has been ejected adding, “We paid for that land as medicine dealers under LSMDA and now it has been ejected by some few.’’
“And we are demanding that you give back our land because we have called in for account and proper explanation of what happened but till now nobody came to give us a full explanation.
“So, we’re demanding for a second CWC and it’s very simple. Lagos State with over 25 million populace demands and needs a bigger CWC because the one they are building presently is only 720 shops and we have over 3,000 medicine marketers in Lagos Island.’’
While emphasising that the land on which the Lagos CWC is being constructed was originally acquired through the contributions of genuine pharmaceutical stakeholders in Lagos Island, he said the marketers who were over 3,000 invested in the hope that the CWC would offer fair, regulated, and accessible wholesale operations. According to him, the current reality reveals a different and disturbing picture.
Explaining further he said: “The project has now been monopolised by a handful of actors, notably non-pharmaceutical businessmen and a few politically connected players. They have sidelined the very individuals who initiated and funded the project.
“With prices soaring as high as ₦93.5 million per unit, the vast majority of genuine pharmaceutical marketers many of whom are small and medium-scale operators have been priced out of the very market they helped create.”
He further explained that the high price would create a lopsided business environment and also weakens drug supply security in Nigeria’s most populous state.
“This financial barrier is not only unethical but cripples the core purpose of the CWC: to provide a regulated, inclusive marketplace for safe pharmaceutical distribution.
“This development has already left over 3,000 legitimate, pharmaceutical marketers jobless or pushed to the margins.”
Many of them, who had run compliant businesses for years in open drug markets, are now excluded from formal operations in the ongoing CWC, leaving them with no viable alternative in the near future,” Nwajide added.
On his part, a founding member of Medicine Dealers Association and one of the original planners of the CWC, Gabriel Onyejamwa who spoke during an interview, revealed that the land title, initially held in trust for the dealers, was later transferred to City Pharmaceuticals under questionable circumstances.
He also noted that attempts to engage the current management structure have been futile, and many longtime members are now completely cut out of decision-making processes.
He however, appealed to the Federal and state governments as well as the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN) and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to take urgent steps to approve a second CWC in the state and correct the imbalance.
The proposed centre, they argue, must be inclusive, affordable, and strategically located with capacity for over 3,000 traders.
They also recommend that shop rental costs be capped at affordable monthly rates to allow for broader participation among low- and mid-income operators.
In addition, they are calling for transparent regulatory oversight of any future projects to prevent similar abuses.
NAPPMED members insist that the current system is not sustainable. With Lagos serving as a critical node in Nigeria’s pharmaceutical supply chain, they warn that excluding legitimate traders from the formal distribution network could lead to dire consequences, including the proliferation of counterfeit drugs, widening health inequities, and the re-emergence of informal and unregulated drug markets.
According to Onyejamwa, if left unchecked, the exclusion of medicine dealers from CWC operations could destabilise the very objective the reform was meant to achieve.
