The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Moji Adeyeye, has challenged any contractor who claims she demanded money from them as a bribe to come forward and make the allegation publicly.
Adeyeye issued the challenge on Monday while speaking with journalists during a media engagement, where she defended her record at the agency and highlighted reforms introduced since she assumed office.
“Any contractor that I have demanded money from should come here and tell me! I came here for service. I retired happily. I was ashamed of my country. I came to remove some of the shame. And the world is seeing it!” she said.
The NAFDAC boss said she spent 34 years in the United States, where she pursued a successful academic career and served as a professor for three decades before retiring and returning to Nigeria to contribute her expertise to national development.
According to her, she made the decision to return to Nigeria because of her desire to serve the country, despite having enjoyed a comfortable career abroad.
“I lived in the US for 34 years. I was a professor for 30 years in an all-white school. I retired happily. I came here to serve, but some Nigerians have an aversion to service. It is for what can I get?” she said.
Adeyeye lamented what she described as a culture of personal gain, arguing that the mentality of “what is in it for me?” has undermined national development.
“We have rendered Nigeria useless because of ‘what can I get’! We have rendered Nigeria useless because of ‘what is in it for my pocket?’” she said.
She also recounted the difficult condition in which she said she found NAFDAC upon assuming office, disclosing that the agency had inherited debts running into billions of naira and significant operational deficiencies.
“When I got to NAFDAC, NAFDAC had a status of minus maturity level one out of four. We had N3.2 billion debt that I inherited,” Adeyeye said.
She explained that the liabilities included about N1.6 billion in unpaid taxes, outstanding payments to staff who travelled for Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) activities and debts owed contractors.
Beyond the financial challenges, Adeyeye said a large proportion of the agency’s laboratory equipment was dysfunctional, while its information and communication technology infrastructure was also in poor condition.
According to her, between 70 and 80 per cent of NAFDAC’s laboratory equipment was not functioning when she assumed office.
She also recalled that the agency’s ICT infrastructure had been neglected, noting that no director had a laptop purchased by NAFDAC as of 2017.
“No single director had a laptop bought by NAFDAC as of 2017. The ICT was put in the deep freezer,” she said.
Adeyeye said her administration subsequently embarked on settling inherited liabilities, adding that about N3.1 billion had been paid by November 2018.
“We paid about N3.1 billion by November 2018. The other money was fictitious, and we did not pay that one,” she said.
She said some questioned the decision to prioritise the payment of inherited debts, but maintained that her personal values would not allow her to ignore legitimate obligations.
“Then people asked me — why are you paying debts? We don’t pay debts here o! I said ehn ehn? But I told them I was brought up not to owe. Not to be a slave to the lender,” she recalled.
The NAFDAC DG also spoke about the turbulent period towards the end of her first tenure, particularly the industrial action that affected the agency in 2022.
“In 2022, that was the last year of my first term. It was a bad year. It was a horrible year because people instigated, even our staff, to go on strike from June of 2022 to November,” she said.
Adeyeye, however, maintained that despite the challenges and criticisms directed at her administration, the reforms undertaken at NAFDAC had continued to yield results.
She said her return to Nigeria was driven by a commitment to public service and a desire to strengthen an institution critical to the protection of Nigerians’ health and safety.
