NAFDAC Boss Calls for Death Penalty, Life Imprisonment for Counterfeit Product Dealers
Lagos — The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, has renewed calls for significantly harsher penalties against individuals involved in the production and distribution of counterfeit regulated products, proposing that offenders face either the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Speaking at a press conference in Lagos on Monday, Adeyeye said the proposed penalties should be formally incorporated into amendments to the NAFDAC Act and the Counterfeit and Fake Drugs Act, arguing that tougher sanctions were necessary to strengthen the country’s fight against counterfeit, substandard, falsified, and generally unwholesome regulated products. She described individuals involved in counterfeit drug production as “merchants of death,” stressing that those responsible place millions of lives at risk and should face correspondingly serious legal consequences. She reaffirmed that NAFDAC would maintain a zero-tolerance approach toward such activities going forward.
Providing figures on the agency’s recent enforcement record, Adeyeye disclosed that NAFDAC secured 64 convictions linked to counterfeit products across Nigeria between June 2025 and June 2026, with those convicted receiving prison terms ranging from one to seven years without the option of paying a fine in lieu of imprisonment. Some of the cases cited by the director-general involved fake Global Fund Artemether antimalarial medicine, counterfeit cough and cold syrup containing codeine, fake ointments, counterfeit condoms, and other illegal pharmaceutical products.
Adeyeye also disclosed that NAFDAC destroyed counterfeit and substandard regulated products worth more than N1.5 trillion during coordinated raids conducted in Lagos and the South-East between February and March 2025 alone, part of a broader pattern of enforcement activity the agency says has intensified significantly under her leadership. She cautioned, however, that social media claims alone could not establish that a particular product was counterfeit or unsafe, stressing that such determinations require formal laboratory testing and regulatory investigation, while also clarifying that NAFDAC’s mandate primarily covers processed and packaged food products rather than all consumer goods broadly.
Separately, NAFDAC’s Director of Investigation and Enforcement, Martins Iluyomade, disclosed that the agency has traced a worsening trend in the counterfeit trade to Chinese nationals who have relocated their operations into Nigeria itself, rather than manufacturing fake goods abroad and importing them as was previously the case. According to Iluyomade, some of these individuals now own logistics companies within Nigeria that are used to identify high-demand products, coordinate their replication in China, and distribute the resulting counterfeits directly to Nigerian consumers without the need for cross-border shipment, a development he described as making the counterfeiting problem considerably more difficult to contain. He said NAFDAC has been moving to shut down logistics companies found to be complicit in the scheme.
Adeyeye’s renewed push for harsher penalties comes amid growing pressure on Nigerian regulators from manufacturers, medical experts, and economists, who have jointly raised alarm over the surge in counterfeit and substandard products across the country, warning that the trend continues to threaten legitimate businesses, endanger consumers, and undermine broader economic activity. The proposed legislative changes would require approval from the National Assembly before taking effect.
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