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The Senate of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has raised concerns over the circulation of suspected counterfeit drugs, adulterated food and other potentially unsafe consumable products across Nigeria.

The students also expressed concern about the sale of such products in markets, by roadside vendors and through online platforms, calling for stronger regulatory measures to protect consumers.

In a statement issued on September 6, the President of the NANS Senate, Ibeabuchi Moses Onyia, said the development raised questions about the effectiveness of existing measures to regulate drugs, food and other consumable products.

NANS said recent reports of suspected counterfeit toothpaste, dyed palm oil, artificially enhanced fruits, counterfeit soy sauce and olive oil, as well as suspected fake yoghurt products, underscored the need for increased monitoring and enforcement.

The association also raised concerns about the sale of drugs, supplements, cosmetics and food products through social media and e-commerce platforms, urging relevant authorities to strengthen verification and traceability mechanisms for online vendors.

NANS said regulatory agencies should improve public awareness and provide timely alerts on products suspected to pose risks to consumers.

The association also referred to recent comments by former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo concerning adulterated orange juice.

According to NANS, Osinbajo said his wife experienced unexplained headaches after consuming freshly squeezed orange juice, with subsequent tests reportedly indicating that the juice was not fit for human consumption.

The former vice-president reportedly linked the concern to the use of substances such as calcium carbide in the ripening and preservation of some agricultural produce and called for stronger regulation, enforcement and public awareness.

NANS urged NAFDAC and other relevant agencies to intensify surveillance of both physical markets and digital platforms to reduce the circulation of unsafe drugs and consumable products.

‘Let this sink in: a former Vice President of this country, a man of privilege, access, and protection, was not spared,’ NANS said. ‘If harmful, adulterated consumables can find their way to the table of a former Vice President, what hope does the average Nigerian market woman, student, or child have? This single account should have triggered an emergency national response. Instead, silence persists, and business continues as usual for the merchants of poison.’

The NANS Senate stressed that the crisis extends beyond public health.

‘Fake drugs do not merely fail to cure; they kill. Adulterated food and consumables do not merely disappoint; they poison bodies, damage organs, and cut short the productive years of citizens who should be building this nation.

‘Every Nigerian, including a student, who takes a counterfeit antibiotic believing it will heal them, and instead suffers organ damage, drug resistance, or death, represents a stolen future. Every case of chemically poisoned produce quietly consumed by families represents development denied – a workforce weakened, a generation endangered, an economy robbed of the healthy, productive citizens it needs to thrive,’ NANS Senate said.

It described the situation as ‘a development crisis, a security crisis, and a moral emergency’ that must be treated with urgency rather than ‘bureaucratic indifference.’

NANS called on President Bola Tinubu to intervene personally and urgently in what it termed the regulatory collapse at NAFDAC and related agencies, including the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON).

It demanded an immediate, independent audit of their enforcement capacity and performance.

Other demands include a total overhaul of NAFDAC’s monitoring of online and social media commerce, with mandatory verification for vendors selling food, drugs, or consumables digitally, and real consequences, including prosecution, for platforms and individuals facilitating unregulated sales; full public disclosure of the findings referenced by Osinbajo and an independent investigation into chemicals used to treat produce and consumables; immediate, visible, and sustained enforcement action against known counterfeiters and adulterators, beyond sporadic public notices; and a clear public accountability framework under which NAFDAC’s leadership reports regularly and transparently on enforcement outcomes, rather than campaigns that shift responsibility onto citizens.

‘Nigerian students will not stand by while our peers, our families, and our future are poisoned by criminals operating in plain sight because the agency meant to stop them has grown comfortable with failure,’ the statement further reads.

‘We call on President Tinubu to act – not with another committee or another statement, but with decisive, verifiable reform. The health of this nation, the safety of its people, and the very future of its development depend on it.’

There is a linkage between a mother’s ability to read and the survival of a child, four post-graduate students of the Department of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Ibadan (UI), Osinaiwo Inioluwa, Ogundoyin Oyinkansaola, Ahmed Kayode and Aderemi Suliyat, have said.

The postulation of the scholars is coming on the heels of the International Literacy Day on September 8.

According to the scholars, new data showed that a mother’s ability to read may matter as much to her child’s survival as the food on the table.

‘Every year on September 8, the world pauses to mark International Literacy Day. In 2026 – the day’s theme is ‘Literacy for People, the Planet and Prosperity,’ with global commemorations hosted in Mexico. But for millions of Nigerian mothers, literacy is not a global talking point. It is the difference between a child who thrives and one who does not.

‘According to the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2024, 32 per cent of Nigerian children under five are stunted, 18 per cent are underweight, and 8 per cent are wasted. Only 29 per cent of infants under six months are exclusively breastfed, and just 36 percent of newborns are put to the breast within the first hour of life. UNICEF estimates that about two million Nigerian children suffer from severe acute malnutrition every year, and it is one of the highest burdens anywhere in the world, with the North-West stunting rates climbing as high as 57 per cent.

‘ Malnutrition is already known to be implicated in roughly 45 per cent of under-five deaths in Nigeria. What is less widely discussed is the role a mother’s literacy plays in that statistic. Nationally, children of mothers with no formal education have about 55 per cent higher odds of being stunted and 49 per cent higher odds of being underweight than children of mothers with secondary education or higher. Children of mothers with no formal education have 55 per cent higher odds of being stunted than children of mothers with a secondary education.

‘The reason is not mysterious. A mother who can read is more likely to attend antenatal clinics, start breastfeeding early, sustain exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and introduce complementary foods at the right time, in the right variety, and with proper hygiene. She can interpret a food label, recognise a fortified product on a shop shelf, and follow simple written or illustrated feeding guidance. She can also spot the early warning signs of illness in her child and seek care before a treatable condition becomes a fatal one. Where that literacy is missing, the consequences increase across a lifetime. Malnutrition in early childhood is linked to poor cognitive development, weak school performance, and lower adult productivity, leading families and eventually communities into a cycle of poverty and poor health that repeats itself in the next generation.

‘This is not only a Nigerian problem, but Nigeria carries a large share of it. The country’s under-five population is one of the largest in the world, and the same NDHS figures show wide regional gaps: children in the North-West and North-East consistently fare worse than those in the South, tracking almost exactly with maternal school attendance in those zones. Nigeria already has the infrastructure to break that cycle: adult literacy programmes, primary healthcare centers, and women’s empowerment schemes operate in every state. What is missing is the deliberate integration of functional health and nutrition content into that existing infrastructure. An adult literacy class that teaches a woman to read her own name but not a food label, or a feeding chart, has done only half the job. Closing that literacy gap is not a job for the education sector alone; it demands coordinated action across health, education, agriculture, and women’s affairs, because its effect on child survival is direct and measurable, at a fraction of the cost of treating severe acute malnutrition once it occurs.

While making a call to action, the scholars said: ‘Federal and state ministries of education, health, and women’s affairs should co-design a functional nutrition-literacy curriculum for adult and out-of-school learning programmes, delivered in local languages and pictorial formats so no woman is excluded by dialect or by illiteracy itself. Primary healthcare workers should be trained and resourced to reinforce this learning at every antenatal and immunisation visit, and food and drug regulators should be pushed to simplify nutrition labelling for low-literacy consumers. Every naira spent teaching a mother to read her child’s growth chart is a naira spent preventing a stunted future. Nigeria cannot claim progress on literacy while its children are quietly paying the price of what their mothers were never taught to read. Now is the time for a change!’

A vision conceived more than five years ago has become a reality with the launch of Project Centum, a five-year youth empowerment initiative designed to equip 100 young Nigerians annually with vocational and entrepreneurial skills.

The South-West pilot was launched at Discovery Empowerment House in Abeokuta, Ogun State, with the first three trainees, their parents, trainers and project partners in attendance.

Founded by Wale Fakile, founder of Rach. Gabriels Fashion Company, and overseen by Propagar Media Limited, Project Centum will provide training in vocational skills, entrepreneurship, digital literacy, mentorship and market access.

The initiative is starting with shoemaking through the Rach. Gabriels production system, with plans to adapt the model to other vocational sectors, including fashion, woodwork and other skilled trades.

The six-month programme combines hands-on training with business and digital skills, mentorship and access to markets. At the end of the programme, trainees will also be introduced to collective purchasing structures designed to improve access to production materials and reduce costs.

The first cohort marks the beginning of a five-year plan to directly empower 500 young Nigerians across the country.

Project Centum is structured around regional partnerships, with the Tobby Emmanuel Foundation serving the South-West, SiediHub the South-East, Hope Interactive the North and Value360 Empowerment Initiative the South-South, while Propagar provides central oversight.

Fakile described the launch as the fulfilment of a vision that had survived years of uncertainty.

‘We dreamt. We faltered. We dreamt again. And we are here. Project Centum started more than five years ago as an idea I scribbled on a notepad. There were times I wondered if it would ever happen. So seeing our first three trainees begin this journey today is deeply personal for me,’ he said.

He added: ‘We are starting with three, but I don’t see three. I see the 500 young people we want to empower over the next five years. I see the businesses they can build, the people they can employ and the lives that can change when young people are given the skills and opportunity to build for themselves.’

According to Fakile, shoemaking is only the starting point of a broader vision to create a replicable empowerment model.

‘Shoemaking is our starting point, not our destination. The bigger vision is to create a model that connects vocational training with mentorship, digital skills, markets and access to resources and then make that model available to other industries and communities,’ he said.

Project Manager, Stephanie Nneoma Nwache, said the launch demonstrated what could be achieved when a vision was matched with commitment and execution.

‘A vision can live on paper for years, but at some point someone has to decide to build it. Project Centum became real because we kept moving, developing the structure, bringing the right people together and finding a way to make the first cohort happen,’ she said.

Nwache added that the objective was to ensure the trainees left the programme with more than certificates.

‘They should leave with a skill, the confidence to use it, the knowledge to build a business and the connections to find a market for what they produce,’ she said.

Founder of the Tobby Emmanuel Foundation, Tobby Emmanuel, said the partnership reflected a shared commitment to practical and sustainable empowerment.

‘Empowerment has to go beyond giving people something today. It should give them the capacity to create value for themselves tomorrow,’ he said.

Emmanuel added that the foundation was proud to provide the infrastructure for the first cohort and participate in what he described as the first step of a potentially larger national initiative.

Project Centum will begin with its South-West pilot before progressively expanding to other regions, with the goal of training 100 young Nigerians every year for five years.