A civil advocacy group popularly known as Rescue Nigeria has warned that the fast-spreading scourge of substance abuse among the young population in Nigeria has crossed a dangerous borderline, with children as young as eight years now being introduced to harmful drugs as parents and teachers watch with ignorance and helplessness.
Speaking at the People’s Parliament, a quarterly public discussion about important problems facing the country, on the theme: “Drug menace: impact and solutions to substance abuse in Nigeria,” experts concluded that without urgent intervention, a vast majority of a new generation of Nigerians may be lost without a fighting chance.
They said Nigeria could find itself without the manpower necessary to build a strong nation. A special adviser to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and former Director-General of Christ Against Drug Abuse Ministry (CADAM), Dr Dokun Adedeji, warned that the country is on the edge of a precipice of a ‘drug nation’ when more than 14 million people were already hooked on illicit drugs, three times more than the global average.
Adedeji said: “In five years if we don’t do something, we are not going to have a strong population of young people anymore. We are not going to have good people in authority. We are not going to be able to do anything.
“If you look at our population, the highest rate of use is between 25 and 39. That age range is the productive sector of any country. If you lose that set of the population, where is the future?
“Liberia has a population of five million people, Mauritania four million, Guinea Bissau two million and Gambia has two million. The significance is that the number of Nigerians using drugs can make a nation by virtue of people who use drugs.
“Many of the drug users want to quit. How they got there they do not understand, but the problem is stigma and discrimination. If I leave the drug, what’s next? My parents have disowned me. No more family. I don’t have a job. Who’s going to take me back?
“We look at drug users as terrible people. That’s not true. Anyone can use drugs. With the level of ignorance pervading the nation, a lot of people go into drugs without even knowing. All it takes is just one use and you may be hung.”
Another panellist, a human rights activist and Executive Director of Choice Solution Welfare Initiative International (CSWII), Dr Oluwakemi Ademola-Aremu, said Nigeria has a huge problem on her hands for which the clock is ticking. “I had the notion that drug addicts were on the streets, but I have discovered that they are right in our homes.”
Ademola-Aremu said her experience working with the homeless and children in Ibadan revealed that many of those doing drugs are now under-aged, and warned that students in private high schools and universities were exposed to conditions leading to substance abuse without many of their parents being aware or, at times, hiding the reality because of shame.
“If we are going to fight, we must take it as a combat,” she pointed out, asking Nigerians to tackle the problem head-on because the country is now consuming drugs nation.