Eromosele Abiodun
26 December 2011
Courteville Business Solutions Plc, listed in the Commercial/Services Sector of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has partnered the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), to ensure easy registration processes for all NAFDAC-regulated products.
Executive Director (ED), Projects, Strategy and Research of Courteville, Mr. Femi Niyi, who made this known in a chat with newsmen in Lagos stated that the partnership would enhance the efforts by NAFDAC to curb the importation and production of fake products in the country.
According to him, the solution called NAFDAC Automated Product Administration and Monitoring System (NAPAMS) is designed and developed by Courteville to enhance the service of NAFDAC and provide a seamless platform for product registration at the Agency.
He said: “This solution was developed and customised for NAFDAC and it does not exist anywhere. It is a patented solution for NAFDAC and we and NAFDAC have been jointly working on this for two years to ensure that it works appropriately.
“The solution will help NAFDAC better regulate and control the importation, exportation, manufacture, distribution, advertisement, sale and use of Foods, Drugs, Cosmetics, Medical Devices, Chemicals, Detergents and bottled water in Nigeria.”
NAPAMS, he said, would also facilitate the remote verification and authentication of information on all NAFDAC approved products in Nigeria.
Niyi affirmed that NAPAMS was an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP), which would allow NAFDAC to provide its services for the seamless registration of products, adding that the solution came in three modules.
According to him, the first module is the front-end module, which allows the clients of NAFDAC to go online, purchase registration forms, fill in all the required information for the registration of products and submit the application online.
“The clients would attach to their applications, all documents required by NAFDAC; these include pictures or images of the product they want to register, and submit all these online. Due to no direct fault of NAFDAC, the process of getting a product registered currently could take upward of night months and I say no fault of NAFDAC because they actually want to do things faster; but because the moment you are handling physical documents and human beings as well, there will always be issues to cope with,” he said.
Niyi said those intending to register their products with NAFDAC would save up to 40 per cent cost in this new process compared to what was obtainable in the past stressing that it would eliminate repeated documentation.
“A great proportion of the products registered by NAFDAC are those imported by Nigerians and foreign businessmen. Imagine the number of time they would have to travel to the country and NAFDAC offices for updates and the attendant hotel and travel expenses. You can imagine all those things been eliminated” he said
He stated that the second module was the workflow module, which was an online working environment for members of staff of NAFDAC, where they would receive applications online,
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