Pharm. (Mrs) Uche Sonny-Afoekelu currently serves as the Director of Drug Registration & Regulatory Affairs of the Agency. Before assuming this position, she was the Director of Veterinary Medicine and Allied Products (VMAP) Directorate as well as Lead Inspector for Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Inspection of Pharmaceutical Products.
Mrs Uche Sonny-Afoekelu is a resourceful, experienced and well- versed Pharmacist who graduated with honors from the University of Nigeria Nsukka in 1987. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Health and another in Biotechnology Innovation and Regulatory Science from the prestigious Purdue University, USA.
She is a Fellow of the World Health organization Prequalification Team, (WHO-PQT – Inspection services) and has assisted the World Health Organization as a consultant in carrying out prequalification inspections in India.
She has also at various times assisted the World Health Organization as a Temporary Adviser in the review of relevant guidelines and in consultations on Good Practices for Health Products manufacture and Inspection,
She led the NAFDAC Team that conducted the final verification on SWIPHA Nigeria Ltd, the outcome of which was the public declaration of SWIPHA as a GMP compliant company by the World Health Organization (WHOPIR) in 2014. SWIPHA thus became the first company in Nigeria and West Africa to be so declared.
She has at different times trained other ECOWAS medicines regulators on Regulatory Inspections and was the Lead GMP Inspector at the first ever joint GMP Inspection in ECOWAS.
She was appointed by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) from 2017-2019 as the Lead, National Pharmaceutical Expert in Nigeria and Anglophone West Africa (The Gambia, Liberia and Sierra-Leone) for the joint WAHO-UNIDO Project to develop a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Roadmap for the ECOWAS region.
She anchored the development of the GMP roadmap in these countries. The aim was to help the local pharmaceutical manufacturers (where available) improve their standards and upgrade their facilities in line with the requirements of the WHO. It was also to provide a springboard for start-ups to get it ‘right first time’. This would enable a sustainable access to affordable medicines that are safe, efficacious and of acceptable quality within the ECOWAS region.
The project, which was a West African Health Organization (WAHO) initiative in partnership with UNIDO, was finalized in collaboration with other partners and is currently being implemented in NAFDAC. She was very instrumental to the achievement of the Agency’s WHO Maturity Level 3 status, where she anchored the regulatory inspection function.
She has attended numerous professional development engagements across many countries and is a CQI/IRCA certified ISO 9001:2015 Quality Systems Lead Auditor. She is a Fellow of the West African Post Graduate College of Pharmacists and also a Fellow of the Pharmaceutical society of Nigeria (PSN).
