Dora Akunyili

Dora Akunyili was a Nigerian public servant who served as the director-general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control from 2001 to 2008. She was widely recognized as one of the most committed and successful government administrators in Africa. Under her leadership, counterfeit drug sales in Nigeria dropped by an estimated 80 percent. Akunyili's story is more than one of efficiency, however it is a profile in courage, for she survived attempts on her life, by arson and by gunfire, from Nigerian counterfeit drug traffickers. She had, in the words of New Scientist magazine, the most dangerous job in Nigeria. But she remained undaunted in the face of threats. Drug faking or counterfeiting is the greatest evil of our time, she told Time magazine. Malaria can be prevented, HIV-AIDS can be avoided and armed robbery may kill a few at a time, but fake drugs kill en masse. Akunyili was born in Makurdi, Nigeria, as the fifth of seven children. Her father Paul Young Edemobi was an Igbo chief who recognized his daughter's intelligence and sent her to live with the family of his wife's brother, who was a schoolteacher. Akunyili finished her high school education in the midst of Nigeria's civil war in the early 1970s, attending Queen of the Rosary College (a Catholic high school) in the town of Nsukka. After achieving the strongest academic record in the school's history, she was admitted to the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. She studied pharmacology and graduated in 1978. She also obtained a master's degree in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Ibadan. She worked as a hospital pharmacist, a lecturer, and a senior lecturer at the University of Nigeria. She also served on several state government boards and was named supervisory councilor for agriculture in a local government unit in Anambra state. In 2001, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed her the director-general of NAFDAC. She had a special motivation for attacking the country's counterfeit drug problem; in 1988, she had watched her sister aged 21, die after being given injections of fake insulin as part of regular diabetes treatment. She put together a team of mostly female pharmacists and inspectors and started a war against counterfeit drugs that saw many open-air medicine markets across the country closed down. She also broadcast jingles on radio and television to make the public aware of the dangers of substandard drugs and to encourage people to report suspicious drugs. She also published lists of counterfeit products regularly in the newspapers. She was involved in several controversies and scandals, such as the MTN fine reduction, the Babachir Lawal's grass-cutting saga, the Maina reinstatement, the NNPC contracts award, and the Oil for Food Programme investigation. She was also accused of undermining the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, and sidelining other ministers and officials. She died in 2014 after a brief illness.