THIS week, operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) uncovered a hotel in Abuja where drugs were allegedly sold and young ladies camped for commercial sex. In another event, a lady was arrested at NAHCO Export Shed of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, while trying to export packs of codeine tablets weighing 15.15 kilograms to the UK. On Tuesday last week, narcotic officers at the airport arrested a drug courier during inward clearance of Ethiopian Airline passengers at the E-arrival hall, recovering bottles of codeine weighing 5.65 kilograms from him. In a related development, two female students of Edo State Polytechnic were arrested for being in possession of 21 wraps of skunk, while another lady was arrested when she tried to deliver 200 grammes of crack cocaine to a customer at an eatery in Benin.

Earlier, men of the Irrua area command of the agency had evacuated 10 bags of cannabis sativa weighing 135kg in Amahor bush in Igueben area. The exhibits were to be transported to other parts of the country. Early this month, the agency arrested a National Youths Service Corps member for allegedly importing four kilograms of drugged candies from the United Kingdom, while operatives attached to courier companies in Lagos intercepted 1.2kg of cannabis concealed inside locally made cookies going to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. And yet again, operatives of the NDLEA, Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Department of State Services (DSS) seized Captagon pills, a hard drug concealed inside the cylinders of an imported machine in Apapa Port of Lagos State. It is reportedly one of the most notorious stimulants taken by terrorists in the Middle East. The list of seizures is literally endless.

To say the least, as in other parts of the world, drug trafficking and the use of hard drugs constitute a potent threat to Nigeria’s national survival. It is not hard to guess that the pervasive insecurity in which the country is mired is in large part driven by the abuse of substances. Bandits, kidnappers and terrorist of all hues take drugs in order to wreak untold havoc on the country. Alarmingly, even students in primary and secondary schools are being co-opted into the drugs matrix. In April this year, a bizarre episode unfolded as NDLEA operatives arrested two Abuja-based partners who allegedly specialised in selling drugged cookies to inhabitants of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), including school children. The situation is so bad that children or househelps in the habit of taking car keys, ostensibly to wash cars in the home, have been reported to be sniffing fuel.

In June, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revealed that around 275 million people used drugs worldwide in 2020, while over 36 million people suffered from drug use disorders. In 2019, the 2018 National Drug Use Survey, a joint research by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Centre for Research and Information on Substance Abuse (CRISA) with technical support from the UNODC, indicated that 14.3 million Nigerians aged between 15 and 64 years engaged in drug use. In June this year, the Chairman/CEO of the NDLEA, Brig-Gen Buba Marwa (retd), speaking in Ogidi, Ijumu Local Government Area of Kogi State during the Ogidi Yam Festival, lamented: “What is most heartbreaking is that majority of them are young people who are initiated into cannabis use around the age of 19. There is also increasing use of other psychotropic drugs, especially heroin by a growing number of young people who are mostly initiated at the age of 22 years.”

Given the foregoing, the NDLEA’s renewed onslaught on drug abuse and drug trafficking is both welcome and worthy of applause. According to reports, between January and May this year, the agency under Marwa has taken steps to boost the morale and confidence of its officers and men by addressing their welfare and career stagnation issues. It is noteworthy that the agency has reportedly made cash and drug seizures valued at over N100 billion, attracted international support such as the donation of operational equipment and technical assistance by the UNODC, the Europen Union, and the United States, United Kingdom and French governments, among others, and fostered partnerships with drug law enforcement agencies in foreign jurisdictions through MoUs and intelligence sharing, an instance being the recent agreement with the Drug Law Enforcement Agency (DLEAG) of The Gambia. It has also launched an onslaught on drug cartels across the country, arresting over 8,634 drug traffickers and five major drug barons. The reported seizure of more than 2.7 million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs, filing of over 5,000 drug cases in court with over 1,630 convictions and 3,232 pending cases in court, while some 4,269 addicts were counseled, rehabilitated and reintegrated back into the society, are all important milestones.

As we noted in previous editorials, it is saddening that generally in the Nigerian society, nobody thinks about the other person any more: people are only concerned with the pursuit of money by any means. With many Nigerians developing psychiatric problems, and with the psychiatric departments of teaching hospitals across the country being full of cases of patients who negotiated their journey into mental emasculation with the abuse of drugs, it is clear that Nigeria is in the throes of a drug epidemic. According to a recent research, findings from epidemiological studies on drug abuse show that the burden of drug abuse is still high despite the existing drug laws, policies, and strategies for prevention. It is therefore important for the NDLEA to keep up the tempo of its activities. We commend it and urge it to heighten enlightenment activities on the dangers of hard drugs. On their part, state governments must collaborate with the agency and ensure that sanity returns to the country. This is a fight that the country cannot afford to lose.