Those meant to guard Nigeria’s drug supply chain may have helped break it.
That is the allegation from Kano’s anti-drug task force, which says officials of the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria (PCN) exploited regulatory processes to keep pregabalin, a controlled substance, flowing across the state.
Muhuyi Magaji Rimingado, chairman of the Kano State Multi-Agency Task Force on Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, laid out the claims on Saturday while addressing journalists.
Preliminary investigations, he said, had uncovered a network of individuals using regulatory channels to facilitate the circulation of illicit drugs.
According to Rimingado, the trail starts with a licence. UGO Lab Production Nigeria Limited, he alleged, was granted permission to import pregabalin after the drug had already been designated a controlled substance.
The company’s owner then set up a second firm, Seemark Pharmaceutical Nigeria Ltd, which investigators suspect was being used as a channel for unlawful distribution.
The trail, he said, ends close to home. Rimingado alleged that the PCN registered a residential property at No. 10 Apple Avenue, Nomansland, Kano, as a pharmaceutical outlet, in breach of regulatory and land-use provisions.
That registration, he argued, allowed controlled substances to be distributed straight into residential communities, where families live and children play.
For the task force, the case raises a troubling question: if the body responsible for licensing and policing pharmacies is itself implicated, who is left to protect the public?