Sixty6 Media

It is high time the Federal Government declared a state of emergency on fake and substandard products in Nigeria. A group of greedy, organised criminals cannot keep poisoning this country while they smile to the bank. What is happening in our markets is not petty trading. It is organised economic and public-health sabotage. It should be treated with the seriousness we reserve for terrorism, because the outcome is the same: Nigerians are being killed slowly, quietly, and profitably. NAFDAC has said cosmetics, food and beverages now account for over 50% of the counterfeit products it seizes. Pharmaceuticals remain a major share. That means the things we put on our skin, put in our children’s mouths, and swallow when we are sick are the most faked categories. In February 2025, coordinated raids on the big open drug markets in Idumota, Onitsha and Aba sealed more than 11,000 shops and evacuated 138 truckloads of suspected fake, expired, banned and unregistered medicines valued at over ₦1 trillion. Markets that supply a huge share of medicines used across Nigeria. In February 2026, NAFDAC uncovered what it called a “death warehouse” at Lagos Trade Fair: over 10 million doses of fake cerebral malaria injections, antibiotics and banned Analgin, worth about ₦3 billion, products officials said could have killed three million Nigerians if they reached the streets. Days later, another ₦3 billion haul of banned and toxic cosmetics came from the same complex. Customs has been intercepting containers of expired drugs and products carrying fake NAFDAC labels; one Apapa seizure alone was valued at ₦53.4 billion. Fake malaria drugs worth ₦1.2 billion have been found declared as “spare parts.” Counterfeiters now use online ordering and groupage cargo to stay one step ahead. Official estimates put substandard and falsified medicines at around 13–17%. Pharmacists and some market studies put the figure far higher in open markets; 30% and above, and in some assessments over 50%. Even bottled water is being refilled and resealed. Imported auto spare parts fail SON standards at rates reported as high as 95%. People die from malaria that “treatment” never treated, from antibiotics that never fought infection, from cosmetics loaded with mercury and steroids, from electrical and auto parts that fail when lives depend on them. Confidence in every product collapses. When citizens cannot trust medicine, food or water, the social contract itself is damaged. NAFDAC has already described the trend as a threat to public health and national security. That language is not accidental. Seizures without enough prosecutions and convictions only recycle the problem. Criminals calculate that the profit is worth the risk. A state of emergency here does not mean empty speeches. Treating large-scale manufacture, importation and distribution of life-threatening fakes as organised crime against the civilian population with the intelligence, inter-agency and prosecutorial weight that implies. Properly funding and coordinating NAFDAC, SON, Customs, FCCPC and the police so raids are followed by convictions, not just bonfires. Closing or strictly converting the worst open drug markets into coordinated, traceable wholesale systems. Public naming of syndicates and the ports, warehouses and markets that keep feeding them. We cannot continue like this. A nation that cannot protect what its people eat, drink and use for treatment is not merely facing a regulatory failure. It is facing a slow-motion assault on its own population. The Federal Government should treat it as such.

Walai nobody can worse pass Police in my eyes😭😭😭😭

You would think you are most private, most careful, smart, responsible and prayerful until certain things happen to you.

When things turn around for good for you, don’t look for more people, lift up those who have been with you.