Life National Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), Chief Adebowale Omotoso, has said that “criminality and culture of sabotage are significantly reduced in any nation that treats its nationals as human beings, with self-respect, dignity and whose needs and interests are jealously protected”.
Speaking in Awe town, Oyo State, Omotoso noted that Nigerians are not inherent criminals but have capacities
for self-determination and self-direction in good and noble things.
He added that due to corrupt leadership, “things have continued to fall apart terribly while the centre cannot hold. Education should increase the consciousness level of Nigerian youths and socialise them into the national culture. But what do we find today, education without morals due to lack of power monitoring and clear-cut policies devoid of political sentiments in regulating education or meaningful development. Ideally, politics influences education through the policies and decisions that are made by the political leadership to ensure the realisation of national, state and
party objectives. As a result of these notions, there are many
political problems that jeopardised educational management in the country”
Advising youths to make accountability, righteousness and justice their watchword as prescription for nation-building, the renowned industrialist pointed out that “the society has degenerated from a community of people with high moral values and dignity to a state of near madness, collapse of moral values and tolerance of immorality’’.
According to him, “dignity has been thrown away by both young and the old. Our society now embraces immorality, just as sexual sin is freely committed without any sense of shame. Indecent dressing, mostly among ladies, is now the order of the day. Many young ladies, even mothers, dress to reveal their bodies. It is extremely indecent and very
shameful for ladies to flaunt their breasts or expose other parts of their bodies in the name of fashion.”
He also advised parents and guardians to inculcate in their wards the right type of values and attitudes for their survival, and their society.
“Proper upbringing will not only foster respect for the worth and dignity of the children, but as well ensure the right moral and spiritual values in inter-personal and human relations. Parents should give their children the opportunity to develop whatever talents they are endowed with within the context of aims of their society. Such opportunity does not come cheap and it is building on all responsible, including the societies, to make whatever sacrifices required, to ensure that their children and citizens have access to sound education”.
Omotoso, who is the Asiwaju of Afijio, pointed out that education “is a very personal thing and the benefit of it flows first to the individual before it can be of any benefit to society”.
These benefits, he said, are indirectly proportional to the level of education attained by each individual.
Omotoso, a renowned pharmacist, also described counterfeiting of medicines as “one of the greatest atrocities of our time and the worst aspect of corruption which affects life directly”.
He noted that the evil of fake drugs is worse than the combined scourge of Malaria, HIV/AIDS, armed robbery and illicit drugs.
According to him, “Fake drugs led to treatment failures, development of drug resistance and death of many people. Drug resistance occurs mainly in the areas of infectious diseases and malaria. Before the 70’s, malaria was regarded like flu in Nigeria because of the efficacy of chloroquine. By the early 90s, due to the development of resistant strains of malaria parasites partly induced by substandard anti-malarias, we started shifting to second line drugs like Fansidar, and lately Artemisimin Combination Therapy (ACT).The question now is if drug counterfeiters succeed with ACT, where do we go from there?”.
He also expressed dismay at the general poor or total lack
of record keeping of health-related activities in various health
establishments and wondered why NAFDAC has no data on drug use from hospitals and universities that do not carry out enough research in the area of drug use and treatment failures.
“Due to this dearth of information, it is difficult to estimate on
annual basis the death toll from fake drugs in Nigeria”.
Attributing weak laws hampered by abuse of judicial process, granting of inordinate injunctions to counterfeiters, long delays of trials and other handicaps to some of the challenges facing food and drug regulation in the country, he asserted that in most countries, laws against drug counterfeiting are very weak and consequently, criminals are shifting from gun running and cocaine pushing to drug counterfeiting because it is financially as lucrative but of relatively lower risk.
“The rate at which drugs are either abused or misused by our people is alarming and disturbing. They no longer consult with qualified pharmacists for whatever of their ailments, but rather patronise roadside medicine sellers and quacks to buy drugs without considering the attendant implications”.
While stressing the need to develop, improve and adapt vaccines, drugs and diagnostic reagents locally, the pharmaceutical expert also called for the establishment and maintenance of National Reference Centres, for pathogenic viruses, bacterial and parasites.
“It is also necessary to develop new techniques and strategies for the control of communicable diseases, especially malaria, measles, poliomyelitis, trypanosomiasis, hepatitis and onchocerciasis to improve health care system.’’
He said: “Government must also increase productivity in the local drug industry, by developing medicines and other new biological products through a combination of genetic engineering, microbial fermentation and chemical engineering. Also, the three-tiers of government must
develop appropriate and effective health educational programmes, aimed at checking prevalence of drug abuse and misuse, as well as environmental filthiness.’’
