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 - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom