Abdullahi M. Gulloma
At a meeting with Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia state and medium and small scale business operators in Abuja, Acting President Professor Yemi Osinbajo directed the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to give specific timelines within which they would be able to grant license to businesses.
Subsequently, the Director-General of SON, Mr. Aboloma Osita, who attended the meeting, said that the organisation would issue approval within 60 days while the Acting Director-General of NAFDAC, Mrs. Yetunde Oni, said that her agency would issue license to businesses within 90 days.
Both officials said counting starts from the day requests are submitted.
The Acting President said it is the role of government’s regulatory agencies to act as catalysts of beneficial change and take responsibility for facilitating businesses in the country. “We must see ourselves as agents of some catalytic change, we must take some responsibility to make profound changes possible,” he said.
And, he can’t be more poignant. In Nigeria, businesses are often times frustrated and, in some cases, discouraged dissuaded out of the country by mostly our institutions charged with the responsibility of registering them such as NAFDAC and SON.
Agreed, these institutions have problems of their own, which are numerous and some of which are genuine. Combined, these problems manifest themselves in delay in issuance of license, compromise of the agencies and their workers’ integrity and underperformance.
Unfortunately, some of the problems faced by the NAFDAC and SON have to do with the nation’s laws, with some of them considered out of relevance and deficient in their implementation. Another problem is bureaucratic bottlenecks bedeviling the agencies, especially in the area of granting license to businesses.
Of course, these are not the only agencies in Nigeria snarled by bureaucracy, even if they are among the most noticeable organisations. Therefore, it will go a long way in helping these two agencies for the government to reduce level and quantum of bureaucracy going on there while at the same time disentangling them from legal web surrounding them and slowing their works.
No doubt, these agencies are essential in our country.
The law makes it mandatory for businesses in the food and drugs industry to register their products with NAFDAC which is tasked with the responsibility safeguarding public health through ensuring that only the right quality foods, drugs and other related products are manufactured, exported, imported, advertised, sold and used while the SON is vested with the power to designate, establish and approve standards in respect of metrology, materials, commodities, structures and processes for the certification of products in commerce and industry throughout the country, and to carry out any other functions imposed on it by the Act establishing it.
Yet, as important as they are, these agencies can only function optimally and serve “as agents of some catalytic change” as envisaged by Osinbajo if they are encouraged by especially the government to act as such.
