The yr 2024 was fairly hectic for the Nationwide Drug Legislation Enforcement Company (NDLEA), Nigeria’s public company, saddled with the duty of administering guidelines towards drug trafficking, manufacturing, and sale. The company’s process included doing all it takes to eradicate the cultivation, processing and trafficking of onerous medication within the nation.
Final yr alone, the company arrested 17,670 for drug-related offences, prosecuted 3,427 and rehabilitated 8,129 drug customers. The company seized medication and different psychotropic substances of about 2,726 837.80 kilograms and destroyed 220 hectares of hashish farms.
Despite a collection of legislations providing drug management legal guidelines and insurance policies by successive administrations, drug abuse stays a grave drawback. The story has at all times turned out to be an enactment of the federal government’s fantasies, with no tangible results of curbing the manufacturing, trafficking and abuse of harmful medication and substances within the nation.
Scary Knowledge
Nigeria has very appalling statistics of drug abuse. There’s a appreciable rise within the charge of crime, particularly amongst youths, as a result of rising charge of drug abuse.
It’s estimated that 15 million Nigerians aged between 15 years and 64 years abuse medication. And the impacts are seen.
Basically, drug and substance abuse, particularly among the many nation’s largely youthful inhabitants, which is more and more became political thuggery, constitutes each current and future hazard.
Nothing illustrates this higher than the truth that drug use is carefully linked to the seemingly intractable incidence of insecurity in numerous elements of the nation. There’s clear nexus between drug use and the actions of bandits and different terrorists who assault communities, rape, and abduct residents.
Chukwuma Okoli and Folahani Aina’s ‘Capsules, substances and Brigandage: Exploring the Drug Consider Nigeria’s Banditry Disaster’ is amongst a plethora of research that established a transparent nexus between substance abuse and the lengthy years of banditry/terrorism, particularly within the northwest. “The (ab)use of medicine and poisonous substances by bandits has been a crucial catalyst for the banditry disaster in Nigeria”, the authors famous.
The Politicians Are Complicit
Throughout electioneering campaigns, the youths are sometimes fed with medication and different psychotropic substances and remote-controlled into attacking perceived political opponents and snatching poll containers on election day. Underneath the affect of those substances, they mortgage not simply their current and future however the way forward for the nation.
As a matter of truth, the nation has moved from being a transit level for unlawful medication to a producer, client and distributor. Many components, together with what many have described as very weak laws and the nation’s continued place as a transit route for drug peddlers, contribute considerably to this disturbing place the nation finds itself in.
In its 2024 version of the World Drug Report, the United Nations Workplace on Drug and Crime (UNODC) stated Nigeria and different nations on the continent are more and more getting used as transit routes for cocaine, heroin and different medication. How finest can the nation deal with this?
Clearly, a technique is to take sterner measures towards drug sellers. The decision by the Director-Common of the Nationwide Company for Meals and Drug Administration and Management (NAFDAC), Prof Moji Adeyeye, for the demise penalty for faux drug sellers readily involves thoughts. It’s crystal clear that those that take care of counterfeit merchandise, cocaine, heroin, hashish and different psychotropic substances, are mass murderers. And killers don’t need to reside.
Wanted: One other Legislation
Professor Adeyeye’s name makes me mirror on final yr’s nationwide meeting modification of the NDLEA Act. After all, in the course of the legislative course of that culminated within the modification, the Senate made and adopted a advice for the demise penalty as an alternative of life imprisonment for drug peddlers.
Sadly, whereas the Senate proposed a demise sentence, the Home of Representatives opted for a life sentence for convicted drug offenders.
It was on the level of harmonizing their positions that the lawmakers wasted the chance of sending a robust message to illicit drug traffickers and customers.
Adopting the report of a convention committee of the 2 chambers, the Nationwide Meeting opted for all times imprisonment, and what we have now, which is awaiting the president’s assent, is a legislation that gives that: “Anyone who’s unlawfully concerned within the storage, custody, motion, carriage or concealment of harmful medication or managed substances and who, whereas so concerned, is armed with any offensive weapon or is disguised in any means, shall be responsible of an offence underneath this Act, and liable on conviction to be sentenced to life imprisonment.”
Legal guidelines are topic to amendments, and there’s no restrict to the variety of occasions a legislation could be amended. There’s a must tweak the present laws to supply for the demise penalty not only for sellers of faux medication and different merchandise but additionally for peddlers of illicit medication and different psychotropic substances, as solely a strict penalty will deter drug peddlers.
The entire essence of the proposed capital punishment, which additionally applies to manufacturing, trafficking, dealing in or supply of onerous medication by any means, is to function a deterrent to drug traffickers.
As of the tip of 2023, 34 nations, together with Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Pakistan, State of Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Yemen, retained the demise for drug offences. And about 467 drug-related executions happened throughout the globe.
It’s true that a few of these nations nonetheless battle drug points, suggesting that whereas capital punishment is crucial, it’s not a assure that the menace can be completely eradicated. To the extent that legislation exists to basically function a deterrence, there’s the necessity for Nigeria to toe the road of those nations.
With the devastation introduced on Nigeria by the menace of illicit, faux medication and adulterated merchandise, the nation’s lawmakers should take one other take a look at the amended NDLEA Act, which is awaiting the President’s assent and ensure an unambiguous provision is made for the demise penalty as the utmost punishment for drug sellers. However will the NASS do this?
Nigerians imagine that the choice of the lawmakers to make life as an alternative of demise sentence the utmost punishment for drug sellers could also be within the enlightened self-interest of the nation’s politicians, most of whom are responsible of supplying medication to youths, particularly throughout campaigns.
One factor is for certain. Those that deal in faux, substandard and banned medication/substances are killers who endanger the lives of the current and future generations of Nigerians. They deserve nothing in need of the demise penalty.
A Joke Taken Too Far
That proposal for 31 extra states is a whole joke, pure and easy. And it exhibits how unserious some Nigerians could be. How else can one clarify the demand for extra states when poor governance has rendered a number of the present ones economically unviable? A report by BudgIT revealed that 32 states relied on allocations from the Federation Account Allocation Committee for not less than 55 per cent of their whole income in 2023.
Had been they to be enterprise entities, many of the Nigerian states would have filed for chapter as a result of, taking out the nationwide cake that’s shared on the finish of each month, greater than half of the states can’t generate sufficient income to barely pay salaries. Properly, the reality is what the nation wants probably the most shouldn’t be extra states however good governance at each the nationwide and subnational ranges.
