He also lamented that stigmatisation and discrimination by members of society has made drug users reluctant to seek treatment.
By Saidu Idris
365Daily -The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has disclosed that over 14.3 million Nigerians between the ages of 16 to 65 use drugs.
This is just as it noted that one in every five persons who have used drugs experience a drug use disorder.
Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of the NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (retd), made the disclosure in Abuja on Monday at a conference in preparation to mark the 2023 United Nations drug day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking tagged: “People First: Stop Stigma and Discrimination, Strengthen Prevention.”
Represented by the agency’s Secretary, Mr. Shadrach Haruna, the drug enforcement agency boss also lamented that stigmatisation and discrimination by members of society has made drug users reluctant to seek treatment, leading to detrimental socioeconomic effects on the drug addicts and their family.
He said: “Stigmatisation and discrimination make recovery and reintegration difficult for drug-dependent users who submit themselves to treatment. And the prevalence of such an attitude is counterproductive to the effort, time, and resources invested by governments, institutions, and corporate bodies working to contain the drug problem.
“This is what this year’s theme is about. We must rid ourselves of any bias against those who are drug-dependent to be able to support, expedite, and make permanent their recovery. The theme will serve as an impetus for us to make a collective effort to break down these invincible but formidable social barriers that undermine the attainment of the goal of a drug-free society.”
According to him, 31,675 drug offenders, including 35 barons have been arrested by the agency, with 5,147 of them prosecuted and convicted. He added that over 11,000 other cases were still pending in court, while in the past two years, 23,725 drug users had been counselled and rehabilitated, mostly through brief interventions.
In his remarks, the country’s representativeof the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Dr. Oliver Stolpe, noted that World Drug Day means an opportunity to take stock of efforts made so far to address drug abuse, as well as to determine priorities in the coming year. He noted the need to improve on the availability of treatment capacity to meet the high number of Nigerians suffering from drug disorder, saying: “This year’s celebration is significant with the ushering in of a new government as we are going be setting in place policies that will determine in the next four years in terms of prevention, treatment, and everything that had to do with the effort to improve drug control and to make sure that we take our society from the menace of drug use disorder.”
“We need to further improve on the availability of treatment capacity, at the last count we had around 2,500 treatment centres for people suffering from severe to acute disorders and therefore requiring medical interventions that in comparison to the numbers of millions of people living with drug disorder in Nigeria is still far too little.”