NAFDAC Warns of Regulatory Capacity Crisis as 2,000 Staff Struggle to Oversee Products for 240 Million Nigerians!

Reported by Musa Antiketu,| Journalist at Obaland magazine.

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has raised fresh concerns over its limited manpower, with Director-General Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye saying the agency has only about 2,000 workers to regulate products consumed by a Nigerian population estimated at roughly 240 million.

Adeyeye made the disclosure during an interview with Channels Television on Thursday, July 30, 2026, describing the agency as chronically understaffed and warning that the shortage is stretching its regulatory capacity across the country.

According to the NAFDAC Director-General, the agency requires at least 5,000 additional personnel to significantly strengthen its operations nationwide. She stressed that NAFDAC was not seeking to immediately match the staffing level of larger regulatory agencies elsewhere, but needed substantial reinforcement to perform its mandate more effectively.

“We are 240 million people and we have 2,000 staff,” Adeyeye said, drawing a comparison with Indonesia, which she said has a population of about 280 million but approximately 20,000 regulatory personnel.

“We are not asking for 20,000. We need at least 5,000 more,” she added.

The remarks have again placed the issue of institutional capacity at the centre of Nigeria’s public-health debate, particularly as NAFDAC is responsible for regulating a wide range of products that directly affect the health and safety of millions of Nigerians.

A regulator carrying a nationwide burden

NAFDAC was established to protect public health by regulating and controlling the manufacture, importation, exportation, advertisement, distribution, sale and use of food, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices, chemicals and packaged water, among other regulated products.

The scope of that responsibility means the agency’s work extends far beyond inspecting pharmaceutical factories. Its regulatory functions involve product registration, laboratory testing, market surveillance, inspections, enforcement operations, border and port controls, monitoring of manufacturing facilities, public awareness and action against counterfeit, falsified, substandard or otherwise unsafe products.

NAFDAC’s 2024 Annual Report described the agency’s mission as ensuring that only quality and safe regulated products are manufactured, imported, exported, advertised, distributed, sold and used in Nigeria. The report also listed regulatory oversight, product registration, inspections, compliance monitoring, public education and enforcement among its principal activities.

Against that backdrop, the manpower issue raised by Adeyeye is not simply an administrative question. It concerns the ability of a national regulator to maintain sufficient physical presence across a vast country with a large population, thousands of production facilities, extensive import and distribution networks and a complex consumer market.

Adeyeye acknowledged that the agency cannot physically be everywhere at once.

“Because, like you said, we cannot be everywhere. We are stretched thin. We are doing the very best we can do,” she said.

That admission highlights one of the central challenges confronting regulatory institutions in large and geographically diverse countries: even when laws and regulations exist, enforcement depends heavily on adequate numbers of trained personnel, functional laboratories, logistics, technology, funding and reliable coordination with other government institutions.

The Indonesia comparison

Adeyeye’s comparison with Indonesia was intended to illustrate the scale of the manpower gap rather than suggest that the two countries operate identical regulatory systems.

She said Indonesia, with about 280 million people, has approximately 20,000 personnel working within its comparable regulatory structure, while NAFDAC has about 2,000 workers for Nigeria’s much smaller but still very large population.

The comparison is particularly significant because it puts the Nigerian staffing challenge into perspective. Even without assuming that staffing requirements should be identical across countries, the figures suggest a substantial difference in the number of personnel available for regulatory work.

Adeyeye nevertheless made clear that NAFDAC was not requesting 20,000 additional workers. Her immediate demand, she said, was for at least 5,000 more personnel.

That would significantly expand the agency’s current workforce and, by implication, increase its capacity to deploy more inspectors, laboratory personnel, regulatory officers and enforcement staff across its formations and areas of responsibility.

The request is also consistent with concerns the NAFDAC leadership has expressed previously.

In January 2025, Adeyeye similarly described the agency as severely understaffed and said its approximately 2,000 employees were inadequate for Nigeria’s population. At the time, she argued that the agency should eventually have a much larger workforce but said NAFDAC was not asking the government to immediately increase staffing to 10,000.

NAFDAC’s own strategic plan for 2025 also identified adequate staffing as one of the agency’s most important needs. The document stated that sufficient personnel were required across the headquarters, Lagos and the agency’s formations, while also emphasising training and professional development, particularly for officers operating across Nigeria’s 36 states.

More responsibilities, greater regulatory pressure

The manpower concern comes at a time when NAFDAC is undertaking an extensive regulatory programme involving pharmaceuticals, food safety, medical devices, cosmetics and chemical products.

The agency has in recent years intensified inspections and enforcement operations against counterfeit and substandard products. Such operations require personnel who can identify violations, collect evidence, carry out laboratory assessments, monitor supply chains and follow cases through enforcement procedures.

In May 2026, for example, NAFDAC announced the destruction of substandard, falsified, expired and unwholesome regulated products valued at more than N1.85 billion in Abuja. The items included medicines, banned alcoholic products, herbal remedies and other regulated goods.

The breadth of such interventions illustrates the sheer volume of work required from the agency. Every enforcement action represents only one part of a wider regulatory chain involving surveillance, intelligence gathering, inspection, testing, documentation and public communication.

NAFDAC has also expanded its digital regulatory systems in recent years. The agency’s 2024 annual report highlighted efforts toward improved infrastructure, equipment, training and digitalisation, while its leadership has pursued the goal of maintaining and improving its standing under the World Health Organisation’s regulatory benchmarking framework.

Guardian Nigeria reported in July 2026 that NAFDAC has maintained WHO Global Benchmarking Maturity Level Three following a re-benchmarking exercise in June 2025, while also reporting investments in laboratory equipment, operational vehicles and digital systems.

These achievements underline an important contradiction: NAFDAC has strengthened parts of its regulatory infrastructure and international standing while continuing to face a basic human-resource constraint.

Funding is another critical component

Adeyeye’s latest comments also extended beyond recruitment to the need for stronger funding for enforcement activities.

She specifically referred to the Federal Task Force established under the Counterfeit and Fake Drugs and Unwholesome Processed Foods legislation, saying the task force had not received financial support since the law was enacted in 2004.

“Another is our support. The Federal Task Force C34 bill was enacted in 2004. That bill was never supported with one naira,” she said.

According to Adeyeye, the federal task force works alongside 36 state task forces, creating a framework through which enforcement activities can be coordinated across the federation.

The significance of that statement lies in the fact that manpower alone cannot solve all of NAFDAC’s operational challenges. Recruitment without funding for transportation, laboratories, digital systems, inspections, field operations, training and staff welfare could leave the agency with a larger workforce but insufficient tools to deploy it effectively.

The regulatory challenge, therefore, is best understood as a combination of manpower, funding, infrastructure and institutional coordination.

Not a recruitment announcement

Adeyeye’s call for 5,000 additional personnel should also not be confused with an immediate NAFDAC recruitment exercise.

NAFDAC’s official “Working at NAFDAC” page currently states that the agency is not recruiting and warns members of the public against relying on third-party individuals, websites or platforms for purported vacancies. The agency says any future recruitment exercise will be announced through its official channels and national newspapers.

This distinction is important because public discussion of NAFDAC’s staffing needs could easily be misinterpreted as confirmation of a recruitment portal or employment programme.

For now, Adeyeye’s statement is principally a call for government support to address what the agency leadership considers a critical institutional capacity gap.

Protecting Nigerians requires institutional capacity

The manpower debate ultimately returns to the central question of regulatory effectiveness.

NAFDAC operates at the intersection of public health, commerce, industry and consumer protection. Decisions made by its officers can determine whether medicines reach patients, whether food products meet safety standards, whether manufacturers comply with regulations and whether dangerous or counterfeit products are removed from the market.

A regulator that cannot maintain adequate surveillance risks creating enforcement blind spots. Such gaps can be exploited by manufacturers, distributors or traders who deliberately circumvent safety requirements.

At the same time, regulatory expansion must be accompanied by transparency and accountability. Any future increase in NAFDAC staffing should be linked to clear recruitment standards, professional training, measurable performance targets and effective oversight.

Nigeria also needs to consider the distribution of NAFDAC personnel. Increasing the workforce nationally should not simply mean adding staff to major urban centres. Field inspection capacity in underserved regions, border communities, manufacturing clusters, ports and major commercial markets is equally important.

For Obaland Magazine, the issue therefore deserves to be viewed not merely as a request for more government jobs, but as a question of national health security and institutional resilience.

Government faces a capacity decision

Adeyeye said she was optimistic that the Federal Government would respond to NAFDAC’s request, following discussions with the Minister of Finance.

“The Federal Government is listening that we need a lot of staff and we need support. And I believe they’re going to do that,” she said.

Whether that optimism translates into concrete action will depend on government decisions on establishment approvals, budgetary allocations, recruitment structures and the broader management of the federal public service.

The challenge is clear: NAFDAC is expected to regulate an enormous and increasingly complex market, yet its Director-General says the agency is operating with only about 2,000 personnel.

The agency’s own recent record demonstrates that it has made progress in laboratory capacity, digitalisation, regulatory standards and enforcement. But those gains cannot entirely substitute for human capacity.

As Nigeria’s population grows and its food, pharmaceutical and consumer-product markets become more sophisticated, the strength of its regulatory institutions will increasingly determine how effectively the country can protect consumers while supporting legitimate businesses.

The call for 5,000 additional NAFDAC personnel therefore places a wider issue before the Federal Government: whether Nigeria’s investment in public-health regulation is keeping pace with the scale of the population it is expected to protect.

For millions of Nigerians, the outcome of that decision will not be measured in staffing statistics alone. It will be felt in the safety of the medicines they take, the food they consume, the products they use and the confidence they place in the institutions responsible for protecting their health.

       NAFDAC DG Mojisola Adeyeye says the agency has only 2,000 staff for about 240 million Nigerians and needs at least 5,000 additional personnel to strengthen nationwide regulation and public-health enforcement.