The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has been accused of waging an ethnic war against Igbo traders operating at the shut Onitsha Drug Market (Ogbo-Ogwu) in Onitsha, the commercial hub of Ananmbra State. Frontline rights group, the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), made the allegation in a statement in which it expressed consternation that NAFDAC, despite claims to the contrary, has failed to reopen the market ?since Sunday, February 9, 2025, when it was raided, shut down and militarized?.

Issued in Onitsha on Thursday, April 10, 2025, the statement was signed by Board Chair Emeka Umeagbalasi; Head, Democracy and Good Governance Program, Chinwe Umeche Esquire; and Head, Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, Obianuju Joy Igboeli Esquire. The rights group in the statement strongly called ?on the fourteen (14) serving Anglican and Catholic Bishops in Anambra State including nine Anglican Bishops and five Catholic Bishops to not only intervene and rise in strong condemnation of ethnically and ill-motivated continued closure of the Onitsha Drug Market (Ogbo-Ogwu) by the authorities of the NAFDAC or the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).?

The statement reads in part: ?The Anglican and Catholic Bishops are specifically called upon to use their exalted spiritual and moral positions to prevail on Gov Charles Soludo (a Catholic) and Speaker Somtochukwu Udeze (an Anglican) to executively and legislatively prevail on NAFDAC authorities to re-open the Market without further delays.

?Apart from such executive and legislative duties at the disposal of the two democratic leaders, which have not been brought to the fore; there are also looming dangers including far-reaching public health, security and safety implications especially pertaining to traders and their family members? survival. For instance, the Gov Soludo led Government of Anambra State, and the State Assembly must come out bold and prevail on NAFDAC to re-open the Market to avert hazards to be associated with looming mass expiration of stored drugs belonging to the traders of the Market-and their expected mass deaths as well as indiscriminate springing up of mushroom drug markets in Onitsha and environs. There have been several reports of mushroom drug markets and drug selling kiosks springing up at several roadsides, streets, roadways and private motor parks across the city and environs.

?Some traders have out of anger and frustration reportedly broken into their shops and evacuated cartons of drugs worth hundreds of millions of naira to destinations only known to them. Such incidents have been reported during the NAFDAC-ordered opening of some market lines to enable individual traders to snap NAFDAC seals pasted on their lockup stores-with less than an hour internal given; during which angry and frustrated traders caused a stampede and forced themselves into their stores and forcefully removed cartons of their goods to their newfound mushroom drug market arenas, leading to shutdown and abrupt termination of such exercise. The snapping of the NAFDAC?s seals was to enable the affected traders individually present their cases to the NAFDAC for payment of imposed sundry extortion fees. The indiscriminate rise in mushroom drug markets, drug selling kiosks and drug hawking, out of the prime eyes and regulation of the NAFDAC; has been found by the Intersociety to be one of consequences of the Agency? s poorly handled and executed regulatory operations at Onitsha Drug Market since February 9, 2025. The names of the fourteen (14) Anambra Catholic and Anglican Bishops strongly called upon to intervene are: Anglican Bishops of Awka, Bishop Alexander Ibezim; Aguata, Bishop Samuel Okafor; Amichi, Bishop Ephraim Ikeakor; Ihiala, Bishop Israel Kelue Okoye; Mbamili, Bishop Obiora Uzochukwu; Niger West, Bishop Johnson Ekwe; Nnewi, Bishop Ndubuisi Obi; Ogbaru, Bishop Prosper Afam Amah; On the Niger, Bishop Owen Chidozie Nwokolo; and Catholic Bishops of Onitsha, Archbishop Valarian Maduka Okeke; Ekwulobia, Cardinal Peter Ebere Okpaleke; Awka, Archbishop Simon Paulinus Ezeokafor; Nnewi, Bishop Jonas Benson Okoye; and Aguleri, Bishop Denis Chidi Isizor.

?We further call on influential leaders of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, the Christian Association of Nigeria and the Christian Council of Nigeria in the State to join their Catholic and Anglican counterparts to speak out and rise in strong defense of the persecuted and starved traders of the Onitsha Drug Market including their wives, children, wards and other dependents in their tens of thousands, particularly legitimate billionaires and millionaires among them that have steadily come to the aid of those churches and their leaders. This is more so when we are aware that tasks involving numerous church projects, payment of tithes and brown envelopes associated with paying pastoral homages and hosting synods, etc., have been undertaken by such rich traders in recent times or as of end of Jan 2025 and would not have been possible without them.

?It is now clear and no longer a hidden fact that the traders of the Onitsha Drug Market are facing ethnically and ill-motivated persecution in the hands of the NAFDAC authorities, to the extent that the Agency has abandoned its clearly defined statutory responsibilities as fake, adulterated, expired, counterfeit, substandard and illicit drug watchdog to become an agency undermining public health, healthy living and livelihoods on the grounds of ethnicity, tribe and class. The activities of the Agency at Onitsha Drug Market have long departed from the path of honor, selflessness and patriotism of demigod and incorrigibility. Apart from controversially breaking into thousands of market stores belonging to traders in their absence and carting away their goods including the ?good, the bad and the ugly? and having them seized and confiscated with zero public accountability; the Agency has remained adamant including turning deaf ears on issues of massive looting and confiscation of traders? huge cash sums running into hundreds of millions of naira or only God knows how much and where kept.

?Despite severally being called upon to render public account of its field operations in the Market and the widely reported shoddy activities of its contracted and deployed security personnel drawn from the police and the military, the Agency has not only adamantly refused to hearken to such popular and wide demands, but it has also continued to behave as if it is ?an outlaw? or ?above the law regulatory agency?. As if that was not enough, the Agency went ahead with audacity to impose untenable conditions on traders and insisted till date that such must be met before the Market could be re-opened. Apart from a flurry of extortionist conditions imposed, the fulfilment of such harsh conditions on individual case basis is another way of telling the traders to pick up ?AK-47s? and lay siege on roadblocks or go into prostitution or internet fraud and other acts of immorality with alacrity either by themselves or through their above underage male and female children or wards.

?The worst of it all is that the Agency is consciously or unconsciously creating a new environment of the graveyard. By shutting down the Onitsha Drug Market for more than two months, the Agency which claims to be ?Nigeria?s expert regulatory agency on drugs and their production and consumption? is deliberately using ethnically motivated delay tactics at ensuring that 90% of drugs kept and stored in traders? shops and packing stores since past 60 days are expired at the end of the day; thereby putting lives of many members of the Anambra residential population and those of their neighboring states at high risk of mass untimely deaths or implosion of other health hazards. It is therefore most likely correct to say that it is much better for the NAFDAC not to have started its Feb 9, 2025 operations in Onitsha than the present precarious and dangerous situations. In other words, more lives of the Anambra population and those of their neighboring states are presently at high risk than they were as of Jan 2025 when the Agency?s operations have not been commenced.

?It is therefore our advocacy position that Trader-Christians especially those engaging in legitimate businesses who are under spiritual midwifery of the above Christian leaders called upon must morally, physically and intellectually be aided especially when they are troubled or facing such state or sub-state persecution and wickedness. The present ordeal and hardship of the Onitsha Drug Market traders has gone beyond offering ?prayers of infantilism? or ?hope of hopelessness?. We have earlier called on Gov Charles Soludo and Speaker Somtochukwu Udeze to strongly prevail on NAFADAC to relax its obnoxious, defective, deformative and untenable conditions imposed on the affected traders of the Onitsha Drug Market and re-open the Market.

?An Anambra State House of Assembly generated public hearing or Gov Charles Soludo?s reasonable gubernatorial counseling or advice to NAFDAC on security, public health and other social consequences of such continued closure, in record time, as well as the State Government?s commissioned Judicial Panel of Inquiry, immediately after; would have ended the impasse and re-opened the Market. The above was similarly the case in 2007/2008 during the protracted impasse between the Onitsha Electronic Market (EDAO) and the defunct Inter-Continental Bank: per Retired Hon Justice Emekekwue of his blessed memory. The Government of Anambra State under Gov Soludo should also have served as a surety for the Market and its genuine traders before the NAFDAC for the purpose of expeditious re-opening of the Market; a market that generated largest internally generated revenues for the State in 2024. It is therefore our position that the continued closure of the Onitsha Drug Market by NAFDAC is partly, if not substantially blamed on Gov Charles Soludo led Government of Anambra State.?

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