Proliferation of fake Skincare products in Nigeria

Recently, I got to know that the brand has been aggressively selling its products and has been in the market for years without National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) certification. Numerous people have complained that the skin care products being sold by this brand are harmful and cause a lot of damage to the skin.

Recently, one of their customers took to social media to give her personal honest review of the product. She stated that the product is very harmful using herself as a witness to how much damage the product has done to her skin. According to her, instead of the skin care manufacturers offering her customer service or following up on her to see why their products caused severe damage to her skin, they decided to arrest her and detain her just to bully her into silence. This I have come to learn is the company’s mode of operation; if a customer gives a negative review about their products they will harass and bully that customer into silence.

This got some of us worried about why the girl should be arrested for giving her honest review about the product. Some persons take it upon themselves to carry out an investigative enquiry about this product that is bullying every one of their customers that dare give negative reviews about their product and to every one’s amazement this leading skin care maker has been trading with no NAFDAC certification. The NAFDAC number they pasted on their products to deceive the public was forged by them. On finding this out, NAFDAC went down to their Abuja office and sealed it up some days ago.

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This got me thinking about the unquantifiable damage this product has done to an uncountable number of persons who have used these products over the years. For a product not to have been certified by NAFDAC means that the product is totally unsafe and unhealthy for human use or consumption.

To be fair, there is no product that is 100 percent safe for human use or human consumption but there is at least a minimum required safety box that every product must tick that is why the NAFDAC and the Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) whose jobs is to ensure that each of these products before they are released into the Nigeria market must have ticked this safety box if the product does not it will be declared unsafe and NAFDAC will refuse to issue them the safety certification.

The amount of products in the Nigerian market without NAFDAC certification is enormous. Some of these products are even household names. They pay millions of naira to influencers and advertising agencies to aggressively push these products into the market.

NAFDAC, SON and other health and safety agencies need to do more in cracking down on these uncertified products and arrest the manufacturers before more people die.

Stanley Alieke is a legal practitioner.Email: [email protected]