The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has announced the suspension, withdrawal, and cancellation of 101 pharmaceutical products, effectively banning them from the Nigerian market.
In a statement released on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, via its official X (formerly Twitter) handle, the agency said the affected products are prohibited from manufacture, importation, exportation, distribution, advertisement, sale, and use in Nigeria. Members of the public were directed to NAFDAC’s website for the full list.
The banned medicines cut across several categories, including antimalarials such as artesunate-amodiaquine (ASAQ) tablets and artemether/lumefantrine formulations, cardiovascular drugs like valsartan and amlodipine products, and diabetes medicines such as Januvia/Janumet and Amaryl tablets.
Also on the list are abacavir tablets, insulin and growth-hormone injectables (e.g., Norditropin), inhalers, and eye drops. Many of the affected products are linked to major pharmaceutical companies, including Sanofi Aventis Nigeria Ltd, Novartis Nigeria Limited, Bayer East Africa Limited, Healthline Limited, and Fensyl MHP Consulting Ltd.
Explaining the regulatory action, NAFDAC said a withdrawal occurs when a product’s Certificate of Registration is discontinued at the request of the market authorization holder, a suspension applies when the conditions under which the license was issued are no longer met, while a cancellation means the registration license has been formally revoked.
The agency described the move as part of its ongoing efforts to curb the circulation of fake, substandard, and falsified medicines, which it warned pose a critical threat to public health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously estimated that one in every ten medicines in low- and middle-income countries fails quality control tests, underscoring the scale of the problem.
The announcement comes days after NAFDAC sought the collaboration of pharmacists nationwide to combat substandard drugs and reported seizing N1.2 billion worth of fake malaria medicines in Lagos, alongside shutting down an illegal cosmetic factory.
