Godwin Haruna
13 July 2007
Lagos — What Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu was to China is what Prof. Dora Akunyili is to Nigeria: the regulator of food, drinks, drugs and other products consumed by the public. But Xiaoyu has just paid the ultimate price for abusing public trust in a country where death penalty for corruption remains non-negotiable. Godwin Haruna writes
Public office is a public trust. For those invested with public office in all cultures, they are expected to be guided by their oath of office. Although penalties vary from country to country for those who abuse this trust, they are nonetheless brought to book for the deterrence value. While some countries may be pliant with the application of this law for exigencies of politics and ethnicity, others insist on what the law says on public officials' malfeasance.
Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu, erstwhile head of Chinese Food and Drug Administration, Nigeria's equivalent of NAFDAC, kept his date with the hangman on Tuesday for abusing the trust reposed in his former office. He was executed for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash. The lure of easy wealth was so overwhelming for Xiaoyu that he gave no thought to the safety of his countrymen and women before approving unwholesome drugs for them. For this unwholesome collusion with death merchants, he kept a date with nemesis on Tuesday when life was snuffed out of him.
During Zheng Xiaoyu's tenure from 1998 to 2005, the State Food and Drug Administration approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.
"The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems," agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying had said at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China's track record on food and drug safety.
Yan was asked to comment on Zheng's sentence and that of his subordinate, Cao Wenzhuang, a former director of SFDA's drug registration department who was last week sentenced to death for accepting bribes and dereliction of duty. Cao was given a two-year reprieve, a ruling which is usually commuted to life in prison if the convict is deemed to have been reformed.
"We should seriously reflect and learn lessons from these cases," Yan said.
Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he was in charge of the State Food and Drug Administration.
His death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and indicates the leadership's determination to confront the country's dire product safety record.
Last year, dozens of people died in Panama after taking medicine contaminated with diethylene glycol imported from China. It was passed off as harmless glycerin. The spokeswoman said she did not have any information about whether or not the Chinese manufacturer, Taixing Glycerin Factory, and the Chinese distributor, CNSC Fortune Way, had been punished.
China admitted last month that it was the source of the deadly chemical that ended up in cough syrup and other treatments but insists the chemical was originally labelled as for industrial use only. Beijing blames the Panama traders who eventually bought the shipment for fraudulently re-labelling it as medical-grade glycerin.
Scandals over contaminated Chinese food exports have underscored chronic problems with adulterated ingredients and fake products in the domestic supply, raising questions of how well China can guarantee the purity of food for the Olympics.
"All the procedures involving Olympic food, including production, processing, packaging, storing and transporting will be closely monitored," Sun Wenxu, an official with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, told reporters Tuesday.
A food safety official also promised an investigation into the Beijing Times newspaper report about water coolers, but noted that a May inspection of Beijing's drinking water products found more than 96 per cent were safe.
"Problems found with some individual cases cannot be interpreted to mean that the entire water industry has problems," Wu Jianping of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine told a news conference.
In North America earlier this year, pet food containing Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine was blamed for the deaths of dogs and cats. Since then, U.S. authorities have turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular toy trains decorated with lead paint.
Yan said the food and drug administration was working to strengthen its safety procedures. The administration has already announced a series of measures to tighten safety controls and closed factories where illegal chemicals or other problems were found.
But Yan acknowledged that her agency's supervision of food and drug safety remains unsatisfactory and that it has been slow to tackle the problem.
"China is a developing country and our supervision of food and drugs started quite late and our foundation for this work is weak, so we are not optimistic about the current food and drug safety situation," Yan said.
Chinese officials have already said the country faces social unrest and a further tarnished image abroad unless it improves the quality and safety of its food and medicine. Last week, China's food safety watchdog said almost 20 per cent of products made for domestic consumption were found to be substandard in the first half of 2007.
The China story os of interest to Nigeria too. Until some five years ago, Nigeria's own version of the regulatory agency, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, was practically toothless. Both drug and food importers had a field day causing havoc for innocent Nigerians, who used their hard-earned money to purchase poisons, dressed in the garb of drugs, for themselves.
However, a refreshing turn-around came with the appointment of Prof. Dora Akunyili as chief helmsman of the agency. With tact and firm determination, within her first six months in office, she recorded some gains by exposing the evil trade. Undeterred by the initial success, the iron lady steadily stamped her authority and stoically refused to be swayed by easy lucre and has remained a nemesis to the merchants of death in Nigeria until the present day. Even at the risk of her life and members of her family, she has remained resolute.
The two most notorious open drug markets in Kano and Onitsha had at one time or the other, been closed down for their unwholesome practices. At such moments, Akunyili would not be swayed by any argument outside the safety of Nigerians. With Nigeria's drug czar, there are no sacred cows, the law must take its course no matter who is involved. The percentage of Nigeria's drug safety record has practically shot up.
Unlike the bad news from China (incidentally Nigerian drug importers patronise them very well), her record of public service is glittering.
Many contend that it is good enough for those who abuse their oath of office are punished like in the case of Xiaoyu. But isn't it intriguing that in Nigeria, people like Akunyili, who kept faith with their oath of office, hardly get rewarded? She was believed to have been barred from the ministerial list for stepping on big toes in the course of her duty. It's a case of two countries with contrasting values.
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