The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control has raided fifteen supermarkets in Minna, Niger State capital.
The agency sealed one and confiscating many expired commodities from others.
The agency’s Director, North Central, Shaba Mohammed, disclosed this on Thursday to the News Agency of Nigeria during the exercise in Minna.
Mohammed said: “We are here to conduct some raids on some supermarkets in Minna. So far we have covered 15 supermarkets in Minna. In all, we discovered some items which have been evacuated.
“We also discovered unregistered products and others which have expired with the dates changed.”
Mohammed explained that some of the items included tea, baked beans beverages and other food consumables.
“There was one particular supermarket with very poor hygiene, poor warehousing to the extent that they were storing some of their products in the toilet.
“We had no alternative than to evacuate everything and the supermarket was sealed,” he said.
He said the owner of the sealed supermarket and other suspects were invited to Abuja and Kaduna for further investigation.
The director said the seized products would be taken to the laboratory for detailed analysis to enable the agency to prosecute the suspects accordingly.
He said the violators would be made to pay fines or face prosecution and the products destroyed, to protect public health.
Mohammed advised the public to always read the label on any products they purchased to verify the NAFDAC registration number and expiration date because some of them could be cleaned and reprinted.
Also, the State Coordinator, NAFDAC, James Kigbu, said the agency was on routine exercise to protect public health.
“This is part of our activities to carry out regulatory functions,” he said.
NAN observed during the raid that some of the supermarkets packed items meant for sale to unsuspecting members of the public on the floor of dirty warehouses infested with rodents that could endanger public health, instead of packing them on pallets for protection.
The North Central zone of the agency comprises Niger, Nasarawa, Kogi, Benue and Plateau States.
Source: NAN
