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