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From Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin Kebbi
The National Agency for Food and Drug and Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has tasked the Association of Table Water Producers (ATWAP) and Micro and small scale food manufacturers and other stakeholders across the 21 Local Government Areas of Kebbi State on the need to adhere to all regulations regarding manufacturing and safety practices.
The Director North-West Zone of the agency, Dadi Nantim Mullah while addressing the participants at a stakeholders and enlightenment campaign held in Birnin Kebbi, explained that the target of the engagement was to ensure a total compliance with the regulations of NAFDAC at all levels.
Mullah, said: ” our expectation after this engagement is to ensure that the citizens of the State get the best of quality products and therefore stakeholders must comply with the government and agency’s regulations to ensure this. If they do so, we would have safe products, less visit to the hospitals and people would sleep with their eyes closed because they would not be afraid of the effects of consumption of unwholesome and substandard products.
“It is therefore my believe that the stakeholders here today will henceforth comply with the NAFDAC regulations because they now know better. This training we are having today is to provide more knowledge and increase the level of understanding of the stakeholders so that when they go back to their respective locations, they will be doing the right things in terms of compliance with the requirements for the production of quality packaged water and safe foods for all the citizens of the state.”
Earlier in his welcome address, Kebbi State Coordinator of NAFDAC, Alh. Muyideen F. Suleiman explained that he had to close down nearly a hundred packaged water factories when he first resumed duties in the state.
Suleiman said that close to a hundred packaged water facilities in the state were either close or put on hold due to violations such as outright lack of registration, non-renewal of production license and non-compliant facilities.
He said: ” recall also that during my first visit to packaged water factories in the state, close to a hundred packaged water facilities were either closed down or had their production lines put on hold due to violations such as outright lack of registration, non-renewal of production license, non-compliant facilities such as production in just one or two rooms, and poor GMP/GHP among others.
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” The ATWAP state chairman and the local Government chairmen of B/Kebbi, Yauri, Koko, Argungu, Gwandu and Bagudo LGAs will recall their several visits to the NAFDAC office and meetings held with me for almost three days consecutively appealing for leniency and of course their promises and undertakings to ensure corrections before these facilities were reopened.
” It was sequel to this and based on the observable ignorance among majority of members of ATWAP that we agreed to hold a sensitization and enlightenment of this nature for your members in 2022 but unfortunately due to some challenges it could not hold until May 2023 when we secured an agreement with ATWAP. Following that sensitization, I insisted in personally participating in every production license renewal inspection of water facilities to ensure total compliance with our guidelines and requirements and am happy to recall that all facilities whose licenses were renewed in 2022 and 2023 were done with total compliance”.
He noted that the engagement with the ATWAP in the year 2025 was due to the agency observations after inspection exercise that there were stagnated application processing of both new and renewal, illegal and unauthorized production and refusal to respond to compliance directives yet continuing production.
“We came to the conclusion that today’s engagement should come up after which all further violations shall be dealt with while the union will only minimally intervene for any erring member thereafter”.
In his remark,the state Chairman of ATWAP, Babangida Aliyu Bande pledged the total support of his members to comply with the NAFDAC regulations on the productions of packaged water and food.
Series of lectures were delivered during the engagement such as: requirements for packaged water registration, platform for registration (NAPAMS version 3), good manufacturing practices for water, water based and food products and sanctionable violations in packaged water and food manufacturing facilities among others by various speakers from the agency.
