NAFDAC: A festering controversy

ON Monday, November 25, 2013, the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, practically upbraided his colleagues in the health sector for continued dysfunctional delivery. He was, while inaugurating the boards of regulatory councils within the sector in Abuja, making reference to the repeated and perennial agitations by professionals within the sector. While he spoke, it became evident to observers outside the sector how urgently the unravelling controversial decisions in the sector needed to be addressed.

So compelling was his delivery. But it did not seem, for instance, to address the controversy that followed the appointment of Dr. Paul Orhii as Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, four years ago. The controversy is mainly among health professionals and draws its origin from the wording of the statutes over who is qualified to run the agency as a Director General.

The law setting up NAFDAC states in Section 9, sub- section [ 1] as follows: “there shall be appointed for the agency by the President, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces on the recommendation of the Minister, a Director General who shall be a person with good knowledge of pharmacy, food and drugs.” Dr. Orhii, whose appointment steamed up the controversy, is a medical doctor by profession. Though he is not qualified to be registered as a pharmacist by the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, Dr. Orhii has argued that he was qualified to run NAFDAC.

He points at his strings of academic qualifications, stating that he is “not only a medical doctor and a holder of a degree in Law from an American university, but holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Neauropharmacology and is also a Biomedical Scientist”, studying both in the Soviet Union and the United States of America. In a recent statement from NAFDAC, Dr. Orhii sought to be dressed in a pharmacist’s garb for the sake of the requirements of the law.

He stated that “he not only studied Medicine and Law but that he is a Pharmacologist, a Biomedical Scientist, a physician, a doctor of philosophy with special bias in pharmacology and pharmaceutical litigation support and has not only a good academic and practical knowledge of pharmacy, food and drugs but is also a specialist.” He contended that “good knowledge of pharmacy, food and drugs” can be acquired not only through academic study but also by practical experience on the job, thereby suggesting that he was learning on the job, a situation that is utterly strange to the provisions of the statutes.

It is understandable that professional rivalry exists between medical doctors and pharmacists but informed observers believe that it needs not be accentuated at the risk of running an agency as strategic as NAFDAC. Some legal opinions, though constrained from taking sides warn that statutory matters ought to be shielded from professional rivalry. They sombrely argue that issues of professional rivalry needed to be divorced from this matter of the appointment of the Director General of NAFDAC.

Practising pharmacists had followed Dr. Orhii’s appointment four years ago with a petition. They kicked up dust all over the place, warning of the danger of turning a strategic national agency into a platter of nepotism. According to insiders to the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, PSN, the professional umbrella body of pharmacists, they were advised by highly placed government officials to soft pedal and allow Dr. Orhii to complete his tenure, a time frame that is likely to elapse in January, 2014.

Apparently mindful that the Director General is already making moves to get a second tenure approval from government, the pharmacists seem to be feeling uncomfortable. A few months ago, the group petitioned the Presidency concerning Dr. Orhii’s continued stay at the NAFDAC. In marshalling out reasons to establish that government’s appointment of Dr. Orhii was wrong headed, PSN wrote:

‘ The major area to be regulated in line with the regulatory mandate of National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control, NAFDAC, remains pharmacy, food and drugs. Ironically, the incumbent Director General cannot legally be designated a pharmaceutical inspector because the provisions of Sections 5 and 6 of the Poison and Pharmacy Act Cap 535 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 1990 compels all inspectors to be registered pharmacists.”

The petition further argues: “Similarly, the provisions of Sections 9 sub section [ 2] and [ 3] of food and drug makes it obvious that it is only registered pharmacists and persons who have a post graduate qualification in drug analysis who can be designated drug analysts. In same spirit it is chemists or those who have a post graduate qualification in food analysis who can be designated food analyst.”

Seeking to connect the dots, the pharmacists argued that “the only profession that connects all the areas is pharmacy” whereas the only professional able to work knowledgeably in these areas is the pharmacist. It is evident that all the anxieties in the air over the NAFDAC chief executive is heightened because the tenure of Dr. Orhii is coming to an end and the pharmacists do not wish to be caught napping again. Their request on this was clear enough in their petition document to the Presidency: that Mr. President “corrects the unlawful appointment of the Director General, NAFDAC which is not in tandem with Section 9 [ 1] of Act 15 of 1993, in the next dispensation which unfolds in January 2014 by appointing a registered pharmacist who can meet the condition precedent in the NAFDAC Act.”

Even as the pharmacists argue passionately on this, their confidence is boosted by recent accounts of government’s review and reversal of related anomalies in similar appointments. Such instances include the dissolution of the board of the Pharmacists Council as well as the dissolution and reconstitution of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria.

Isa is a consultant on policy & governance is based in Abuja.