It was a stormy session on Thursday June 9, 2016 at the Public Hearing of the joint House of Representatives Committees on Healthcare Services, Drugs and Narcotics in Abuja on the protracted issue of the importation of fake tomato pastes as the indigenous tomato manufacturers put the blame for the proliferation of imported substandard and unwholesome tomato paste squarely on the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). Among the manufacturers present were Erisco Foods Limited and Dangote Tomato Processing Industries and Savannah Industries Limited. Erisco Foods has been in the fore-front of the battle against the importation of fake tomato paste into the country for over a year now. The local tomato paste manufacturing company pointedly accused NAFDAC of encouraging foreign importers of flooding the Nigerian market with fake and substandard tomato paste by not acting on the report and recommendations of the Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Directorate since February 2015 which recommended an immediate recall and mop-up of the deadly tomato pastes.
The session was jointly chaired by Mr. Chike Okafor and Mrs. Ukeria Azodo.
Leading the accusation against NAFDAC, the Chairman of Erisco Foods, Chief Eric Umeofia who told the committee that unknown to Nigerians, NAFDAC of today was a compromised agency both by the current Director-General and his immediate predecessor. Chief Umeofia said the agency no longer enforced the regulations which it was set up for. He alleged that with the knowledge of NAFDAC, importers ordered fake tomato paste from India and China.
Umeofia stated that whenever a complaint over such “illegality” was lodged at NAFDAC, the agency replied by issuing threat letters to shut down the operations of local tomato production companies.
Chief Eric Umeofia, also lamented that NAFDAC after Prof. Dora Akunyili had become a “cash and carry” regulator further stated that “The biggest market in Nigeria today is NAFDAC. They encourage the importation of cancer-causing tomato paste from China and India. He also noted that “During the recent trip by President Muhammad Buhari to China, this question was put to the Chinese on why they sent substandard goods to Nigeria and they blamed it on greedy government agencies. “The Chinese will bluntly tell you “it is what you order that you get.”
Legal Adviser to Erisco Foods Ltd Mr. Abdulrahman Kadiri further quoted a 2015 report of NAFDAC after the agency conducted safety tests over 300 samples of tomato paste. “NAFDAC, by its own report, clearly stated that 91.1% of the tomato paste samples failed the tests, meaning that they were not good for human consumption. “However, the pertinent question still remains; why has nothing been done one year after this report was obtained? Secondly, why has no one been to book? If we do not stop this trend, we don’t know how many Nigerians will die,” he added.
The Managing Director of Dangote Tomato Paste, Mr. Abdulkarim Kaita, also corroborated the claims of Erisco, alleging that some Chinese firms stored “expired” bulk tomato paste in their factories only to mix it with fresh ones for exportation to Nigeria. He noted that in China, the Chinese do not eat the grade of tomato paste they export to Nigeria. According to him, “There are three categories of tomato paste; one for the European market, the Asian market and then the African market. “The paste for the African market, which is the lowest in terms of quality, is further downgraded for the Nigerian market,” Kaila stated. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, which was represented by Mr. Folorunsho Adeyemi, called for an outright “ban on the import of retail tomato packs.” This is in line with a petition they had written to the then co-ordibnating Minister for the economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Professor Samson Adebayo, who spoke for NAFDAC at the hearing however denied that the agency committed any of the infractions alleged by Dangote and Erisco Foods. But strangely, owned up the they had been able to reduce the incidence of non-compliance with the CODEX and NIS specifications to 13 percent. The Chairman of the committee on Health thereafter insisted that the brands who did not meet the standards must be named and shamed so that the general public will know.
