By Anne Osemekeh, Abuja
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), has averred that drug abuse is the catalyst for all the insurgencies and kidnappings ravaging society today.
The anti-narcotics agency’s Kogi State Commander, Umar Yahuza, who disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lokoja on Tuesday, said that the agency was focused on reducing circulation of illicit drugs to forestall usage.
Yahuza explained that with a reduction in circulation of illicit drugs, usage and dependence levels would drop, which would in the long run reduce vices like insurgency, kidnapping, and others in society.
“All the problems of insurgency and kidnapping are drug-induced because it won’t be possible to carry out kidnapping without the use of illicit drugs.
“But we can stop insurgency, kidnapping, and other vices if we collectively fight against the menace of drug abuse and trafficking in the country”, he said.
The commander disclosed futther that the command had put in place strategies to arrest drug abusers and traffickers as well as seize all illicit drugs being peddled in and through Kogi.
He called on the State government, community and religious leaders, and other stakeholders to join the NDLEA to successfully fight drug abuse and trafficking.
He said the advocacy campaigns against Illicit substances will be taken to government institutions/schools, religious places such as churches, mosques, market places, and motor parks, “with the aim of discouraging those contemplating going into the business of illicit drug trafficking and abuse to have a change of mind”.
Those already into it and need help, he said, can come forward to get counselling from the agency, while addicts can overcome it, be rehabilitated and then integrated back into the society.
Yahuza, therefore, called on stakeholders to help sensitise the public to the danger of illicit drugs and see how it could be stamped out by the State in particular and the society at large.
