Nigeria has 15 million addicts – Buba Marwa reveals

Buba Marwa, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee for the Elimination of Drug Abuse, has just revealed that Nigeria has about 15 million drug addicts.

Marwa made this known on Wednesday, in Kaduna, while addressing officers and men of Katsina Command of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

In his words;

“We have an emergency situation before us regarding the issue of drugs abuse in Nigeria,” he said, adding that the Nigerian government decided to raise the committee to proffer recommendations and steps to be taken to resolve the issue of drug abuse in the country,

“We started our work since December and finished the plenary and now we are visiting states across the country.

“On the whole, we are facing the supply side of drugs, in terms of cutting the supply because you must have drugs first before the use. Government agencies involved need to be strengthened to be able to carry out their functions effectively, and the demand side appears to be more difficult to handle.

“We also need to take the preventive measures to ensure that those who do not take the drugs remain so. We have to interface with esteemed leaders across the country. We feel that there ought to be committees on drug abuse, right from the federal to the local governments and across the communities.

“We do not know that the causes of drug abuse include, but it’s not limited to poverty, joblessness and idleness which translate to looking for jobs. Rehabilitation and counselling centres are few. We will interface with religious organisations and traditional leaders and also examine the Almajiri situation and embellish with western education. The Almajiris, in the course of their training, do other things that are not good for them.”

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