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The Pharmacy Council of Nigeria sealed 505 illegal and non-compliant drug premises in Cross River State following a four-day enforcement sweep, after inspectors found nearly half of all shops checked were operating outside the council’s regulatory framework. The council disclosed the results at a Friday press briefing in Calabar, saying the operation covered 602 premises across 10 local government areas and found 48.3 percent operating illegally, a figure the council’s Registrar described as a “decimal performance of regulation” in the state.
Pharm. Ibrahim Babashehu Ahmed, the council’s Registrar, addressed journalists through a representative, Dr. Suleiman Chiroma, who broke down the enforcement figures. Inspectors uncovered 291 fully illegal outlets, all of which were sealed on the spot. A further 54 licensed pharmacies and 160 patent medicine stores were found in breach of regulatory requirements and establishment guidelines, though not immediately shut down. Thirteen compliance directives were issued to operators, giving them an opportunity to correct identified infractions.
Chiroma cited the case of Mrs. Ezea Asidora Kamchekwube, who ran two unlicensed shops in Calabar and was recently sentenced to eight years in prison by the Federal High Court, as a marker of the council’s shift toward legal consequences beyond administrative sanctions. “The recent case… is a signal and proof that Pharmacy Council of Nigeria enforcement now carries real legal weight,” he said.
The compliance figures extended beyond the outright illegal outlets. Chiroma said only 42.5 percent of registered pharmacies inspected were fully compliant, while just 26.8 percent of patent medicine vendors met regulatory standards, indicating that a substantial share of licensed operators also fell short of required standards.
Violations documented during the sweep ranged from operating without valid licenses and maintaining poor storage conditions to unauthorized access to controlled medicines and unsupervised training of apprentices. Chiroma warned that these conditions could allow diverted drugs to reach criminal networks, describing many of the flagged premises as run by “quacks and untrained persons who are not accountable to any statutory authority.”
He urged Cross River residents to purchase medicines only from outlets displaying a valid PCN license, warning that medicines handled by untrained persons raise the risk of treatment failure, antimicrobial resistance, and avoidable deaths, while adding to the financial burden on patients already managing healthcare costs.
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Chiroma tied the enforcement drive to the Federal Government’s Universal Health Coverage agenda, arguing that the policy’s goals cannot be met without a supply chain that guarantees access to safe, quality-assured medicines. He commended Cross River residents for cooperating with enforcement teams and said monitoring would remain continuous, with immediate sanctions for any premises found violating regulations going forward.
The scale of non-compliance uncovered in Cross River fits a pattern PCN has documented in other states during past enforcement drives, where informal and patent medicine vendors, often operating without pharmacist supervision, account for a large share of Nigeria’s drug retail sector outside major urban pharmacy chains. Patent medicine stores are licensed under a separate, more limited regulatory tier than full pharmacies, permitted to sell a restricted range of over-the-counter medicines, but inspectors nationwide have repeatedly found such outlets stocking prescription-only and controlled substances beyond their licensed scope.
The Kamchekwube case Chiroma referenced marks one of the more severe criminal penalties handed down in connection with unlicensed drug sales in Nigeria in recent memory, an eight-year custodial sentence rather than the fines or premises closures that have historically been the primary enforcement tool available to PCN. Chiroma’s decision to highlight the case suggests the council is positioning it as a precedent intended to deter other unlicensed operators, particularly as the council pushes to distinguish its current enforcement posture from past cycles of inspection and closure that critics have said failed to permanently curb illegal drug retailing.
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The council did not specify a timeline for re-inspecting the 214 licensed pharmacies and patent medicine stores found in partial breach, nor did it disclose what specific sanctions, beyond the compliance directives already issued, those operators face if violations remain uncorrected. Chiroma’s statement also did not address whether the 291 sealed illegal outlets would face criminal referral similar to the Kamchekwube case, or whether their closure was purely administrative.
With enforcement continuing, the council indicated further inspections across Cross River’s remaining local government areas, and potentially other states, would follow, though no specific schedule was announced.
