They also include health products donated by the Clinton Foundation, which the ministry failed to share out to health facilities across the country because there was no budget provision for the distribution. The report also disclosed that a committee set to oversee modalities for the destruction of the drugs have completed their assigned task.

The committee chairman was chaired by Okibe Egbuta with Ishaya Arima acting as secretary and Ibrahim Kana, Egerue Emmanuel and Oloyede Adeola as members. Their report put the value of the expired and soon to be destroyed drugs at N417,073,782. Further breakdown shows that those procured by NACA as at October 2013 was put at N62,524,835.36, while that of the Ministry of Health valued at N327,262,490.29.

Drugs bought under the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Programme earmarked for destruction were estimated at N27,088,960.

The value of the drugs procured through the Clinton Foundation, but which would be destroyed, was put at N197, 497.50.

According to a source who spoke to PunchNG reporter, the excess drugs and accumulation was not only problem of distribution, but excess procurement of unneccsary drugs by FMOH and NACA also contributed to it.

The source said, “Irrational procurement is responsible for the huge expenses on the drugs which are to be destroyed now. There was no plan for distribution of the drugs to hospitals and no mechanism for monitoring.

“It is mind-boggling that when many public hospitals do not have enough drugs to meet patients’ needs, the health ministry and NACA want to destroy N417m drugs that were allowed to expire on the shelves, how unfortunate”.

It’s also certainly disturbing to note that some of amount of money will also be spent and ha already been budgeted to facilitate the destruction of the drugs which would be overseen by the Department of Food and Drugs, Ministry of Health, in conjunction with the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control.