By; NASIRU SULEIMAN
Drug trafficking and terrorism are twin evil causing havoc in the society. The terrorists operating in our country are largely dependent on drugs to carryout their odious activities. Most of these boys handling guns and shooting people and burning down communities are not doing so with their right senses: they are doing all these under the influence of drugs.
Few weeks ago, when the DIG operations of the Nigeria police paraded a group of bandits in Sokoto, where thirty two AK 47 riffles, two Rocket lunchers, one Anti-aircraft AA gun was recovered and many other weapons, a patent medicine vendor was paraded with them for supplying the group of bandits with drugs.
This has become a recurring decimal, there was no time a raid will be carried out in bandits enclave without making harvest of assorted drugs including sexual performance enhancement drugs. In fact a suspected wanted bandits was arrested last year in Sokoto when he could no longer bear it and come out of hiding to buy sexual performance enhancement drugs around Aliyu Jodi area in Sokoto and operatives of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps Sokoto state command acting on intelligence and apprehended the wanted terrorist.
It is now obvious that, there is no way Nigeria will win the battle against terrorism and Banditry without waging war on drug peddlers. They contributed a larger part to the criminality that has held our country back over the years.
I don’t know how you feel about the operations of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency NDLEA, but it is very important we support their effort and report excesses of their personnel to ensure a sincere effort to curb drug peddling in our society. Since the assumption of office of the new head of the agency, General Buba Marwa (rtd) a lot of successes have been recorded and the right thing to do now is for citizens to support their effort.
Everyday assorted drugs are finding their ways into our country through all the available borders. The airports are secured except for the alleged collaboration of some law enforcement agents like the recently bursted gang led by DCP Abba Kyari. But the danger is with the land borders that are very porous.
Tramadol, assorted weed, from Arizonal, Canadian loud, skunk, Colorado, and all sorts of concoction are readily available for the youth and all these are transported through the land borders and using the inter states roads to distribute them across the country. This certainly is responsible for the high rate of drug abuse leading to all kinds of criminality in our society and the authority are doing less than enough to stop the level of cruelty in our various communities.
As the authority are budgeting for fighting terrorism, effort should also be directed at fighting drug peddling. The NDLEA is not set to fight those abusing drugs, rather the peddlers are their main target, those who are abusing drugs to the point of addiction are sick people that need to be rehabilitated, so the drug law enforcement agency should not dissipate energy to the wrong venture, but the barons, those with lience to operate pharmacy and are abusing it to distribute drugs and the boys running errands for them on the street should be stopped by all means possibly know to the law.
Nasiru Suleiman is a Sokoto based journalist
