The new Commandant, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) Abia State Command, Juniadu Yusuf has appealed to the state government and stakeholders to assist the agency with logistics in combating the increase in the use of hard drugs. Yusuf appealed while speaking to journalists on the ordeals faced by his command ranging from logistics, bad roads and inaccessibility of some terrain in the state.
He said that the agency’s impact is felt all over the 17 Local Government Areas in Abia, but stresses that some of the hindrances NDLEA has in Abia are the terrain because during the rains most of the areas are swampy and the roads are so bad that their men cannot access most places.
He said, “we have rickety vehicles and on daily basis, we go for operation and end up towing the vehicles back to the office. Our vehicles can be described as one day in the office and four days in the mechanic. “I appeal to the government and stakeholders to see reasons why they need to assist us in this course because the drug abuse is affecting the leaders of tomorrow which is the youths.
“Let them assist us in this course because without vehicles, we cannot achieve much. Again, our rehabilitation centre here is getting filed up as we get drug users we call clients who are threatening to kill their parents on daily basis.” Yusuf said that the link between violent crime and drug abuse is so close that one leads to the other, adding that if drug abuse is allowed to continue, more crimes will be committed. He said that majority of the drug users under rehabilitation in the NDLEA facility in Aba need to be trained on skills so that they can be more useful to themselves after they exit the rehabilitation centre.
“I appeal that as we have them here, it’s just for counseling. They don’t have the skills to learn here. There’s a need for the government to provide some equipment, invite people from different skills and trades to come here and teach them all manner of skills that’ll make them useful after rehabilitation. “When they’re done from here, it’ll be good for them to get something doing by being self-reliant.
I appeal to our people here that the only way to have peace is to check and curtail the excesses of drug abuse because the connection between drug abuse and criminality is clear. If drug abuse is checkmated, we’ll have a peaceful and a more secured Nigeria.” Yusuf also urged parents to be up and doing in the area of children’s upbringing, stressing those facts on the ground show that the majority of drug abusers undergoing rehabilitation in their centre suffered from poor parenting.
According to him, “The upbringing of a child is the responsibility of the society. The parents are the first persons with that responsibility. It is their duty to begin the process of upbringing. “Most of the clients we counsel here we discovered that it is the laxity on the part of the parents that pushed them into drug abuse. The parents are overprotective of these children from a negative angle.
“They do this claiming they love the child so they can confront them when they see evil. They can’t check the kind of people their children move with. “The parents are not doing well at all. They need to keep checking their children from behavioral patterns. We have a whole lot of leaflets we give out on how to understand an addict. “They need to know to get those leaflets. My message to Abia people is to report anything drugs to NDLEA.”
