The Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) has raised fresh concerns over the growing exodus of pharmacists from the country, revealing that about 9,850 professionals have left Nigeria in the last five years in search of better opportunities abroad.
The National Chairman of the association, Pharm. Ambrose Ezeh, disclosed this on Tuesday at the opening of the 45th Annual National Scientific Conference of the ACPN in Abuja, describing the trend as a major threat to the nation’s healthcare system and pharmaceutical industry.
He said records showed that about 9,000 pharmacists exited the country in the four and a half years to December 2026, while over 850 more obtained letters of good standing from the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria in the first six months of 2026 alone.
“The fortunes of the profession continue to plummet rather dangerously in recent years,” Ezeh said, adding that the departing professionals moved to “countries like Canada, the UK, Australia and, to a much lesser extent, the USA and some Asian territories.”
He blamed poor remuneration, weak workforce planning and the failure to fully enforce the National Drug Distribution Guidelines introduced in 2015, warning that the absence of a clear public drug procurement policy continued to undermine the profession and compromise patient safety.
The ACPN chairman urged the Federal Government to sponsor executive bills to reposition the sector, identifying three priorities: amendment of the Fake Drug Act, establishment of a federal Drug Management Agency, and creation of a National Postgraduate College of Pharmacy.
On counterfeit medicines, he said the existing sanctions were too weak, calling for “20 years’ imprisonment for first offenders and life imprisonment, as well as outright forfeiture of all known assets, for subsequent offenders.”
Citing the 2018 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime survey, the ACPN warned that drug abuse had become a national emergency, putting the number of Nigerians abusing psychoactive substances at 21,213,000, and called for stricter enforcement and more rehabilitation centres nationwide.
Source: Vanguard.
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