After a deceptively-long intermission, a new era seems to be unfolding in Nigeria’s fight against drug trafficking and abuse. Noted for his élan, Buba Marwa, the new Chairman/CEO of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, is sweeping the recesses of Nigeria’s hard drugs corridors with a vigorous broom. To underline this, there have been major seizures of hard drugs at various points nationwide since he assumed office. This exposes the growing menace of illegal drug abuse by Nigerians, particularly in the urban centres.
A 2019 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that the adverse health consequences of drug use were more widespread than previously thought. In Nigeria, the most widely used drugs include cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, but new synthetic drugs are also increasingly being abused across the country. West, Central and North Africa are experiencing a crisis of another synthetic opioid and Tramadol. There are local cocktails in most urban centres.
Until the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), appointed Marwa to the post in January, the NDLEA had been lost in a mist of routine humdrum. In contrast, between January and March, the agency, established in 1989, has been warming to its mandate of “exterminating illicit drug trafficking and consumption in the Nigerian society.” Notably, it confiscated and destroyed illicit drugs worth N60 billion in the six weeks to March 4. This is a good step forward.
In a particular seizure on January 27 at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, NDLEA officers intercepted cocaine and heroin weighing 28.50 kilograms valued at N21 billion. The courier, a 33-year-old Nigerian, confessed that she was promised N2 million by the barons to undertake the assignment from Brazil. The agency described the confiscation as the single biggest recovery from an individual in the past 15 years. That week, the NDLEA impounded drugs worth N30 billion, including another cocaine seizure of 8.40 kg at the airport with a street value of N7 billion. The Global Financial Integrity, a think tank, estimates the value of the global trade in drugs at between $70 billion and $200 billion annually.
Apart from more frequent seizures at the MMIA, the NDLEA has also recently made inroads to the drugs networks at the Apapa ports in Lagos, Edo and Nasarawa states, and the Federal Capital Territory. In February, it impounded two million capsules of Tramadol packed in 554 cartons. This coincided with another seizure of assorted drugs weighing 614.396 kg imported from the United States that the traffickers had planned to sell in parts of Lagos, including Agege, Lekki, Okokomaiko and Ikorodu. Bizarrely, drugs were traced to a monarch’s palace in an unnamed Anambra State community recently. From there, the agency recovered 58.5 grams of cocaine and 13.9 grams of heroin. All this attests to the pervasive stench of hard drugs in the society.
Plainly, drugs endanger society. Like the gun proliferation that has turned Nigeria into a killing field, drugs are another weapon of mass destruction. The UNODC’s World Drug Report 2020 states that opioids use “accounted for 66 percent of the estimated 167,000 deaths related to drug use disorders in 2017 and 50 percent of the 42 million years (or 21 million years) lost due to disability or early death, attributed to drug use.” This is alarming.
Drug use has a direct connection to crime, as INTERPOL links the use of hard drugs to violence, saying drug trafficking is associated with money laundering and corruption. Drug cartels like Medellin and Sinaloa in Colombia and Mexico respectively, are so rich and powerful, exerting influence beyond their countries’ borders. In Mexico, there are 14,400 drug-related deaths annually. In Nigeria, rapists, cultists, armed robbers, militants, insurgents and sea pirates exploit the highs they derive from drugs to perpetrate their heinous acts.
Marwa correctly asserts that the situation is so terrifying because kidnappers, bandits, terrorists and other criminals now demand ransoms in drugs.
In addition, drug dependence instigates mental health issues like depression and suicides. Drugs abuse is traced to debilitating illnesses, as 1.4 million people who inject drugs are living with HIV, 5.5 million with hepatitis C and 1.2 million are living with both hepatitis C and HIV, the UNODC says. A 2014 study by New York-based NGO, Population Council, discovered a 4.2 percent prevalence of PWID in Nigeria; but it was 4.8 percent in Kano and 5.8 percent in Kaduna. Drug use impairs judgement and victims are likely to engage in sexually risky behaviour, drop out of school and live a wasted life.
Experts argue that there is the need to get at the roots of drug abuse, find out what factors lead people to take illicit drugs, and figure out what support they need to get off drugs and stay clean. It is also important for the NDLEA to get the message out there that drugs are not the solution to problems and step up efforts to apprehend and prosecute manufacturers and distributors of illicit drugs.
At the moment, Nigeria is not working, a major cause of the present social upheavals. Much work needs to be done y the three tiers of government to alleviate conditions that lead to drug use, conditions such as poverty, abuse, and physical and mental illnesses. The Federal Government should wake up to this discomfiting reality and set the country on the path of economic progress. It should liberalise the economy to enable the private sector create wealth and jobs for the teeming youths, 13.9 million of whom are currently jobless. Corruption should be fought to a standstill. The two other tiers of government should make education a priority, build social infrastructure to drive economic activities and mount awareness campaigns against drug dependence. On their part, faith-based organisations should intensify their moral suasions and enlightenment programmes on the lasting dangers of drug abuse.
