By Ikugbadi Oluwasegun
The Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria has raised an alarm over what it described as widespread, unlawful pharmaceutical practices occurring across several Federal Health Institutions (FHIs), calling on the Federal Government to urgently intervene and impose sanctions on the companies and pharmacists involved.
Speaking on behalf of the association, the National Chairman, Pharm. Ezeh Ambrose Igwekamma, condemned what he called a persistent culture of disregard for the law by some pharmaceutical companies and their superintendent pharmacists, who are allegedly operating illegally within public hospitals, sometimes with the tacit approval of hospital management and regulatory authorities.
According to him, it is a travesty of justice that institutions meant to uphold the law are now enablers of the very infractions they are supposed to prevent.
He accused the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) of looking the other way while unregistered private pharmacy operators take over drug distribution activities in federal hospitals under various Public–Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements.
Pharm. Ezeh criticised the ministry’s earlier experiments with models such as Medipool, describing them as unlawful ventures that have created loopholes in the public drug distribution system.
He insisted that the statutory framework for managing drug supplies in public hospitals remains guided by Decree 43 of 1989 (now Cap 252 LFN 2004), which established the Essential Drug List and the Drug Revolving Fund (DRF).
He emphasised that for the DRF to function effectively, pharmacists must have full control over procurement, distribution, and management, as outlined in the DRF manuals.
However, he lamented that over the years, hospital Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) and Medical Directors (MDs) have allegedly mismanaged DRF resources, resulting in recurrent stock-outs and unstable drug availability in many federal hospitals.
The ACPN chairman highlighted what he termed the most successful DRF model ever recorded in Nigeria, the DRF project of the Department of Pharmacy at the National Orthopaedic Hospital (NOH), Igbobi. Under the leadership of pharmacists, the department successfully built a N200 million pharmacy complex in 2014 without compromising the DRF account.
The association cited multiple breaches of the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN) Act 2022, including Section 22(1): Only registered and inspected pharmacies may store, sell or dispense medicines.
The ACPN issued a strong warning to superintendent pharmacists whose practising licences are purportedly being used to cover these questionable arrangements.
The association urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to call the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare to order, warning that the government-induced chaos in drug distribution is causing avoidable harm to the health sector.
