Pubdate: Tue, 02 May 2006
Source: This Day (Nigeria)
Copyright: 2006 This Day.
Contact:  http://www.thisdayonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2870
Author: Emmanuel Onwubiko

HOW TO WIN THE DRUG WAR

Abuja

In one of his earliest public speeches on assumption of office as the 
democratically elected President in 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo 
promised that his administration will battle the menace of drug abuse 
and trafficking because of the adverse consequences to the socio 
economic environment of the country. The president traced communal 
and religious violence to the high rate of drug abuse among some Nigerians.

The President promised to strengthen the National drugs law 
enforcement agency (NDLEA) in order to actualize the aspiration of 
checking the menace of drug trafficking. The leadership of the apex 
drug agency believes that the current government has implemented 
measures to enhance the effectiveness of the National Drugs Law 
Enforcement Agency[NDLEA], but analysts believe that the high 
incidents of inter-ethnic and inter-religious unrests show clearly 
that drug reduction programmes have not been sufficiently implemented 
by the Anti-Drug body.

On April 2005 when the immediate past Federal Attorney General and 
minister of Justice Chief Akinlolu Olujimi (SAN) led a twelve member 
delegation including this writer to represent Nigeria at the eleventh 
United Nations congress on crime prevention and criminal Justice in 
Bangkok, Thailand, we found out that over eighty eight (88) Nigerians 
were serving various terms in the central prisons in Bangkok for drug 
related offences.

Not long ago, a revelation in the foreign media was made that more 
Nigerian women held in British prisons were convicted for drug 
related offences even as in the last three years, the number of 
Nigerians in the United Kingdom (UK) prisons for drug offences has 
risen by six folds. Specifically, the Nigerian girls, according to 
the media report, were allegedly used as mules by International drug 
barons, whose activities in Jamaica had been checked by the British government.

According to the report in the British Media which also featured 
prominently in most leading Newspapers in Nigeria, British Anti-drug 
trafficking campaigners have warned that the number of Nigerian women 
allegedly involved in the illicit drug trade in Britain may rise 
further if drastic measures were not adopted by both the Nigerian and 
British governments to battle the menace. Specifically the foreign 
media reported that on June 30th 2005, 85 the 151 Nigerian women in 
custody in the United Kingdom were being held for drugs offences. In 
2002, there were only fifteen out of twenty nine women in custody 
from Nigeria. Ladies from Trinidad and Tobago were also fingered as 
some of the most notorious traffickers.

The foreign media reported extensively that; "The apparent shift to 
Nigeria comes two years after an outcry over the number of Jamaican 
female drugs mules in British jails, which climbed to more than 440 in 2002"

"That number has now fallen to 136 following changes to policy 
regarding the early release of foreign prisoners and Operation 
Air-bridge, a joint UK and Jamaican scheme that saw people scanners 
installed" at airports in Jamaica. "I believe since the campaign 
started in Jamaica, there has been a direct shift to Trinidad and 
also Nigeria even more so, "she said.

"Guys who organize these people always try to stay one step ahead of 
the people who are deterring them so they will look and see what is 
going on and move accordingly, she stated." Revenue and Customs 
officials said the number of Jamaicans trying to smuggle drugs to the 
UK by swallowing them had reduced by over 90% thanks to Operations," 
a spokesman said. The research conducted by the country's office of 
the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime uncovered as follows; 
"injecting drug use (IDU) has played a major role in the global 
dissemination and escalation of HIV infection. In Nigeria, since the 
early 1980s there has been a steady increase in the use of 
inject-able substances (heroin and cocaine) in Lagos and other big 
cities in the country. In a recent Rapid situation and Response study 
in four Local Government Areas in Lagos, Adelekan and his colleagues 
(2000) recruited 82 Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) (54 current and 28 
ex-injectors) from the streets within a period of one month. An 
additional 316 non injecting Heroin and Cocaine users (NIDUs) were 
also recruited and interviewed during the same period. With 9.8 
percent of the subjects and 44 percent of the females testing 
positive to HIV at a time when the national prevalence is 5.8 percent 
(Federal Ministry of Health Sero-sentinel report, 2001), the study 
demonstrated that abusers of inject-able drugs in Nigeria are a high 
risk group for infection with HIV". In Kano, the non injectors (53.3 
%) significantly had less than secondary education compared with 
injectors. Although, only a small proportion of both the injectors 
(14.3%) and non injectors (7.6 %) were married, the injectors were 
non significantly twice as married as the non injectors .

Ironically, with the exception of cannabis, which is planted in some 
parts of the Country, cocaine, heroin and other illicit drugs are not 
produced in Nigeria, but vulnerable Nigerians have been employed by 
International drug barons to act as traffickers. Information obtained 
from the official website of the United Nations office on drugs and 
crime (UNODC) authoritatively reported that; "most of the world's 
cocaine is produced in just three countries of Columbia (fifty 
percent) Peru (thirty two percent) and Bolivia (fifteen percent).

In the 2005 world drug report, some 200 million people, or five 
percent of the world's population age fifteen to sixty four (64) used 
drugs at least once in the last twelve months. In 2005 report there 
were fifteen million people higher than last year's estimate but 
remains significantly lower than the number of persons using licit 
psychoactive substances because about thirty percent of the general 
adult population use tobacco and about half use alcohol.

The world drugs report stated further that; "unsurprisingly, the main 
problem drugs at the global level continue to be the opiates (notably 
heroin) followed by cocaine. Questions have been asked severally why 
Nigerians are linked with the illicit drug trade since the country is 
not known as a producer of most of these hard drugs just as some 
analysts believe that the harsh economic environment in Nigeria may 
be responsible for the evil trend.

These set of economic analysts have stated that many more desperate 
Nigerians may be lured into the illicit drug trade going by the 
recent study by the United Nations development programme (UNDP) which 
shows that Nigerians are among the poorest people in the world now.

Governments at every level and the private sector need to 
consistently implement measures aimed at creating employment 
opportunities as the best panacea to keeping the youths away from 
illicit drug consumption and trafficking.

A part of the monthly budgetary allocations to the local government 
councils should be utilized in providing enlightenment programmes and 
vocational trainings for youth so as to check the evil trend of drug.

The new hierarchy at the National Drugs law enforcement Agency 
(NDLEA) should introduce workable programmes to take Nigerian youths 
away from drugs.

Onwubiko, journalist, wrote from Abuja
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