Plumbing materials dealers in Onitsha, the commercial hub of Anambra State, on Wednesday, denied involvement in the alleged attack on officials of the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
Chairman of the association, Ebuka Efuobi, made this known in Onitsha while addressing newsmen, and denied any knowledge of attack in the market.
There had been accusation and counter accusations following the attack on the NAFDAC officials who were in the market on a tip off to inspect a warehouse stacked with suspected fake and adulterated drugs.
Efuobi said his members were not drugs dealers and therefore had nothing to do with officials of the agency, saying, “l am not aware that officials of the agency came to my section. I was not informed and nobody sent for me when they arrived.
“Nobody was beaten to my knowledge and NAFDAC should know that we deal on plumbing materials and not drugs. If they have any issues with the drugs they should ask the drugs dealers popularly called Ogbo Ogwu.”
The chairman said they had a meeting where they agreed that nobody should be allowed to park drugs in the market.
“We have security here. Maybe they didn’t inform anybody when they bashed into the market, went straight to the warehouse and begin to break it,” he added.
Another member of the plumbing dealers, who preferred anonymity, accused the drug dealers of masterminding the assault on the agency officials.
“The truth is that drug dealers are witch-hunting themselves. Who told them there were drugs parked in a warehouse here at the plumbing market?
When contacted, chairman, caretaker committee, Onitsha Patent Proprietors’ Medicine Dealers’ Union Bridge Head Market, Anthony Ezeoba, told journalists he had no time to talk to anybody on the issue.
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