Why we’ll prosecute supermarkets selling imported fruit juices — Acting DG, NAFDAC

The Acting Director-General, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Mrs. Yetunde On interview with PUNCH, talked about the activities of the agency and the challenges.

When asked about how the economic recession affected NAFDAC regulatory functions, she said,

"Let me take it from the food sector. On the prohibition list are fruit juices that are not supposed to be imported into the country.

"Why? We have local capacity; so, we have engaged the stakeholders, telling them that enough is enough; that we should develop our own. Nigeria has fruits all year round.

"We have fertile land. Look at Benue State, for instance, which is the food basket of the nation, it has fruits all year round.

"Why can’t we process these fruits and convert them to juices? We have manufacturing industries locally that can produce the juices.

"When we do that; we’ll be contributing to our economy; we’ll create employment and have mastery of that particular vocation. What is more, the fruit juices produced in Nigeria are of better quality than the imported ones.

"We have engaged our stakeholders in dialogue, during the meeting, we agreed that we should not create artificial scarcity; let us first be sure that we could meet local demand and be able to export. We have therefore given a charge that by December 31, 2016, no more foreign juices in our markets.

"The enforcement arm of the agency has been working since June that we had the meeting. If you go to the supermarkets or the regular markets, you will find out that the quantity of imported juices has dropped drastically"