At the ACPN 45th Annual National Scientific Conference in Abuja, the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria said Nigeria’s worsening pharmaceutical workforce crisis will keep deepening unless the federal government establishes a National Postgraduate College of Pharmacy.
The demand lands in a country where the people actually doing the work are already walking out the door. Pharm. Ezeh Ambrose Igwekamma, National Chairman of the ACPN, said about 9,000 pharmacists left Nigeria in the four-and-a-half years preceding December 2025, while more than 850 pharmacists emigrated in the first half of 2026 after obtaining letters of good standing from the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria. He said many headed to Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries. The message from the profession was blunt: the system is losing trained people faster than it can replace them.
Who Pays for the Breakdown
Igwekamma said the dearth of specialist pharmacists in manufacturing, clinical pharmacy, community pharmacy, public health pharmacy and other critical areas should concern the federal government. He said Nigeria needs a Postgraduate College of Pharmacy to train undergraduate and post-graduate pharmacists for the nation’s health system. That shortage, he warned, will continue to hit hospital, clinical, manufacturing, community, public health and pharmaceutical administration unless urgent steps are taken.
He also said the crisis has been worsened by a large number of professionals leaving the country every year for greener pastures. That’s the human cost of a sector under strain. The people at the bottom keep moving, and the institutions at the top keep issuing statements.
Igwekamma said the fortunes of the profession continue to plummet, with data at the PSN National Secretariat confirming the exit of about 9,000 in the four-and-a-half years preceding December 2026. He said the first six months of 2026 were not significantly better, as over 850 pharmacists collected letters of good standing from the PCN and moved on to countries like Canada, the UK, Australia and, to a much lesser extent, the USA and some Asian territories.
What the System Calls “Development”
The ACPN chairman said only the West Africa Postgraduate College of Pharmacists handles this training at the sub-regional level. He said most countries, including Ghana, abandoned the WAPCP for their home college, while Nigeria still funds the subsidy gap of over 95 per cent to nurture the sub-regional college in forex. That’s a tidy arrangement for everyone except the country carrying the bill.
He said the not-too-impressive reward system and the poor drug distribution system were among the glaring challenges. He also said the National Drug Distribution Guidelines enacted since 2015 are yet to be fully enforced, leaving undefined public drug procurement policies in place. Eleven years after those guidelines were enacted, the machinery still hasn’t been made to work properly.
Igwekamma called on governments at all levels to confront structural deficiencies affecting pharmacy practice and national drug control, with special focus on strengthening pharmacy practice for national development and confronting rising substance abuse. He described pharmacy as a profession that has historically occupied a central place in healthcare, but warned that its fortunes have declined significantly in Nigeria despite its critical contribution to patient care.
Reform, Bills, and the Limits of the State
The ACPN urged the federal government to undertake sweeping reforms in the pharmaceutical sector, including amending the nation’s fake drug law to impose stiffer penalties, establishing a National Postgraduate College of Pharmacy, and creating a Drug Management Agency to strengthen medicine distribution across the country. It also called on the federal government to sponsor executive bills or support private member bills to amend the Fake Drug Act, establish a Drug Management Agency to institutionalise the Drug Revolving Fund, and create a National Postgraduate College of Pharmacy to train specialist pharmacists locally.
Igwekamma suggested that the federal government set up a Presidential Committee on the pharmaceutical sector to push the agenda of these bills and streamline other specific challenges of the pharma sector. He said the existing sanctions were too weak to deter offenders and were discouraging investors in the pharmaceutical industry. He said the activities of charlatans were not encouraging pharma investors because of the extremely feeble sanction culture the Fake Drug Act offers, and said ACPN calls for 20 years’ imprisonment for first offenders and life imprisonment, as well as outright forfeiture of all known assets, for subsequent offenders.
He also urged the government to institutionalise the Drug Revolving Fund system through legislation that would streamline public procurement and distribution of medicines through a central pool. He said the National Council on Health resolved in December 2024 that all public procurement of medicines should be undertaken through the Drug Revolving Fund, requiring clearer legislative backing. He argued that establishing a dedicated Drug Management Agency would remove ambiguities surrounding medicine procurement, streamline nationwide distribution through a centralised system and strengthen regulatory oversight.
The ACPN also cited the 2018 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime national survey and said the 2017 findings revealed extensive abuse of psychoactive substances across Nigeria. According to the survey, cannabis was identified as the most abused substance, followed by opioids, codeine-containing cough syrups, sedatives, tranquillisers, ecstasy, solvents, inhalants, prescription stimulants and cocaine. According to United Nations records, the combined estimates indicated that more than 21 million Nigerians were abusing various psychoactive substances.
Igwekamma attributed the persistence of substance abuse to dysfunctional family environments, youth unemployment, poverty, peer influence, inadequate public awareness and ignorance of the harmful consequences of drug misuse. The profession has laid out the crisis in plain numbers. The state still has to decide whether it wants to keep outsourcing the future of its health system.