In this second and concluding part of Healthnika’s exclusive interview with Femi Babafemi, NDLEA’s Director of Media and Advocacy, he reveals, among others, how illicit drugs undermine national security in Nigeria, the efforts of the agency towards ensuring drug abuse screening is embraced as a formal procedure in Nigeria and how NDLEA collaborates with other government agencies, towards actualizing its mandate.
THE FIRST PART OF THE INTERVIEW IS AVAILABLE HERE.
Healthnika: I need to ask this question and I want you to honestly bare your mind on this, or even the mind of the agency. There has been talk that our political leaders should be tested for drugs before they can seek offices. What is your take? What do you think about this?
Femi Babafemi: It’s not even about me, now. I will tell you the position the NDLEA itself has taken. Indeed, we led the campaign, from 2021. General {Marwa} actually led the campaign vigorously in all his meetings and engagements with stakeholders, where he canvassed for drug tests, not only for political leaders, but also for every strategic sector in the society, starting from students.
The students themselves, they need to undergo that, whether as fresh students going into higher institutions or returning students, they need to undergo that. So, that’s why we have quite a lot of engagements with university authorities to encourage them to buy into that policy and quite a number of them indeed have done so and quite a number of them are working with us.
We also encourage prospective couples and parents, as well as even our traditional rulers and faith-based organizations to also make it as a demand for prospective couples to undergo drug tests. This is not in any way punitive. The whole essence of this is that when these people undergo drug tests, you will know early, because we have seen situations, where newly-wedded couples are calling us in the night that their wife or their husband is chasing them around the house with a knife, when they are already under the influence, when they have taken drugs.
But if they had undergone drug tests before they went into such marriage, they would have known early that, okay, the person I am going to marry is on drugs, so you can then seek treatment for him or her, before you go into the marriage, so that you know what you are dealing with. It’s not to deny you of your marriage, but to seek treatment for that person, before you go into the marriage; not that you get into the marriage, before you now discover that, hey, you have entered one chance.
Healthnika: Excellent sir. So, we can now say that society should actually mainstream drug testing, like we do medical tests.
Femi Babafemi: Exactly. When we started pushing for that, a lot of people were asking us “is that your job? Who are you to be making demands? It’s our fundamental human right to marry. So, how do you dictate how we get married?” We say No! Now, you say it’s not in the law, we say, yes, it’s not in the law, but then, is it in the law for you to undergo genotype tests? Is it in the law to do HIV tests? It’s not there, but you people go to do it. Why? For your own safety. This one is also for your safety. So….
Healthnika: That takes me to a question that people have been asking…..NDLEA, people generally assume it is strictly a law-enforcing agency. So, when you go out there and talk about NDLEA, people tell you all they do is to make arrests. So, after talking for some time now, it’s good to realize that there are counseling centres. A lot of people don’t know that. So, there’s the need to increase awareness about these centres. That’s one.
Number two, you find out that despite all NDLEA has done, the giant strides NDLEA has taken, in terms of trying to check the supply side, the incidence of drug abuse continues to rise, especially among the young population and this is a growing population. Now, this cannot be removed from the sociological problems around us. In fact, it’s a global thing and I want to say probably NDLEA needs to still partner with NGOs, local NGOs, to try and penetrate the student population.
Femi Babafemi: Now, very good. The first one is all about people not knowing that…yes, there had been that perception, for years, that it’s all about arrests and that’s why we are gradually changing the narrative that, no, this agency, by its enabling act, is saddled with the responsibility for prevention, that is through advocacy, okay. When people start to take it, get them help and, for those that are dealing it, possessing it, we arrest them.
But because the arrests are usually the ones that make the headlines, the news in the media; not many people will want to report, okay, we are treating this and don’t also forget that the other side is more of medical, that you cannot come out to be saying we have someone in our facility, undergoing treatment.
So that is why a lot of people are silent, because of the confidentiality with which we treat some of those cases, but then what we are doing that is also gaining ground is to ensure that we continue to spread the message that indeed there are facilities and mechanisms in place to bring help and that’s one of the reasons why we set up that drug abuse call centre, where people, even without leaving their homes, can get some tele-therapeutic treatment…they are actually the first point to assess your case, relating to you, asking you questions.
Based on that, that will give them an understanding, whether okay, this person is at the level where we can counsel him or her on the phone, everyday, monitor him or her, that is giving him or her therapeutic treatment or whether this person has gotten to a point, where he or she needs to be checked into a rehab centre and when it gets to that, then through the systems which are programmed, they can check where you are (your location) and the nearest rehab close to you.
They can refer you there and then follow up with your treatment there. All these things, I tell you, they are in place. Then, to your second question, as to the increasing incidence of drug abuse despite our efforts, well, you already answered it yourself. One, it’s a global phenomenon and two, (…) starting from parenting, the home, the society and quite a lot of socio-economic factors, also there are religious and historical factors, there is peer pressure, there is also the media.
Healthnika: We’ve listened to music that valorize and promote drugs, lewd behavior, violence and these music are targeting the young population that we want to protect. Some of them (musicians) even take those banned substances and use….To what extent are you collaborating with (the appropriate regulatory bodies) and trying to mellow it down and prevent the overplay of these kinds of songs?
Femi Babafemi: I will tell you that indeed, like I have also said, that quite a number of social factors are responsible for why quite a number of our young people are into this. And, like you also rightly mentioned, you see… call it glamorization. They glamorize these substances to the point that the young people, when they watch it on the internet, they are tempted to want to do what these celebrities, their role models are doing, and so….but in our own way, what we have also done is also to go…because most of these young people are mostly online, they don’t watch TV, they don’t read newspapers, they are mostly on social media. So, what we have also done is the agency itself has also moved to the social media.
We are on all the social media. We have huge presence in all of them and what we do is we engage with them there and that’s one of the reasons why we do what we call Twitter Spaces, every Friday 3 to 5 p.m. In some cases, we have 200,000, 100,000, and 50,000 in attendance, across the world. You also discover that people across Nigeria, Africa, Europe and Asia join those discussions, make good contributions and also learn about what we are doing here.
So, on all of those platforms, we engage with them. But beyond that, coming to regulators now, we have a platform called inter-ministerial committees, where some of these other stakeholders who are regulators, whether you talk of NAFDAC, whether you talk of Ministries of Health, Education, Agric., Women Affairs, Youth and Sports…all of them, where we have them together in that IMC. The whole essence is to coordinate and ensure that everybody…. and that’s the whole essence of the National Drug Control Masterplan 2021-2025, also put in place by the agency in collaboration with other stakeholders.
We call it NDCMP 2021-2025. So, in that policy document, each of these stakeholders has been allocated their areas of responsibilities, so that as NUC (National Universities Commission), you know this is what you are supposed to do; NAFDAC this is what you are supposed to do, so that, collectively (because we know it’s not a one man…it’s not a one-agency thing), we all have to collectively and collaboratively tackle this and that’s how we are getting others, like for instance in the Ministry of Education, we have to work with them to ensure that we have it in the school curriculum, the anti-drug abuse subjects, so that these children can be taught about the dangers of abusing illicit drugs, even right from primary and secondary schools. So, we are working with all the stakeholders.
Don’t forget, we can only hold firmly our own end, we need to work with others to do their bit, So, that…. that IMC (Inter-Ministerial Committee) is the platform where we have to encourage them to do their own bit, so that some of these videos are either moderated or not even allowed, because the social media is like an ungoverned space. So, when these things go out there, you can’t really determine, you can’t control how it goes, unless the regulatory agencies or organs of government that have that responsibility can do certain things about them and we are working with them to do that.
Beyond the regulators, we are also working with those producing these things either as the Nigerian Guild of Actors, we are working with them. We have actually had meetings with their leadership. We are working with the musicians, we’ve held meetings with a number of them, the celebrities, we are working with a number of them just to mobilize them and encourage them to “know what you are doing, these things, they are not edifying, they are misleading millions of youths. You may think you are doing it to make money, but also, look at the other side, the millions of youths that take the messages you are passing as the gospel truth. They don’t know that you are doing it as business. You are already misleading them and, so, they go into it. A lot of them try it, from experimenting and they die. A lot of them suffer all manner of damages. Life damages, for that matter”.
So, we are also working with them, but then, you know how it works in that particular sector. We continue to encourage them. Some, at a time, we were arresting them, in Lekki (in Lagos), we had some of them arrested and even taken to court. I know of a particular case, a young man who was convicted. So, we continue to present both the stick and the carrot. When we need to wield the stick, we wield the stick, but we also have to talk with them to collaborate.
Healthnika: On national security, at the level we are, in terms of substance abuse in Nigeria, do you think it has come to a situation where we have to tackle it with the idea of national security at the back of our minds, at this stage? Why am I asking this? One or two months back, the OSPRE in the office of the Vice President held a workshop which included stakeholders and, if you look at OSPRE, it has to do with national security and preparing for emergencies. Has the issue of substance abuse gotten to that critical situation where we have to say, wow, okay, this is a national security matter?
Femi Babafemi: Don’t let’s drag it further. The level we are, on substance abuse in Nigeria, we at the NDLEA and the Federal Government of Nigeria treat the issue of drug abuse as a threat to National Security. And that was why there was that need to rejig the NDLEA and bring somebody who can do a proper job and that is why you have a General Marwa in the saddle, I mean, a well-tested, trusted and respected military general and he has been doing an excellent work in the last few years. So, it’s indeed a national security issue, because we have been able to establish that indeed, there is a strong nexus between drug abuse and most of the security challenges we have across the country.
That, we have been able to establish, whether you talk of insurgency in the northeast, kidnapping for ransom in the northcentral, or even what you have in the northwest and even the challenges we have at the moment, in the southeast…unknown gunmen, all those kinds of things…at the base is the issue of drug abuse.
In the southwest, there was a time, they kidnapped in Ogun State and the kidnappers made a demand for (illicit) drugs as part of the ransom. So, that shows you that, indeed, these people cannot do what they do, with clear minds and clear eyes. They have to be under the influence of mind-altering substances.
That’s why they are able to do the kind of things that a normal human being will not go out to do and we have also had some of our security forces, after clearing their camps, they have often found packets of used drugs, littering the whole places. Beyond that, we have also seen situations where some of those extremist criminal suspects, when they are arrested, after one or two days in custody, when they don’t have access to drugs to put into their system again, they start showing withdrawal symptoms. Then, we have also heard them say…even those who have gone to their camps either as negotiators or as victims of kidnap have also come out to tell us that these people are perpetually on drugs, 24/7, either smoking it, popping it or injecting themselves. And, again, we have also seen them say (that is these criminal elements say) that they are not afraid of lack of lack of guns, they are not afraid of lack of food, but one thing they need most or are scared of not having is drugs.
So, that shows you how important these illicit drugs mean to them in what they do. That was why we started that campaign that look, we all have to come together, let’s remove the drug connection. We reduced the drug connection; we take away from the circulation, illicit substances; you reduce drastically the security challenges, because there will be no drugs to fuel them and beyond that again, all of these people, the barons that are bringing these…as I speak with you, we have more than 40 barons that we have arrested in the last two years and if you know how much has been taken away from them…again, you have seen some of these people bringing in containers of Tramadol, of illicit substances worth 20 billion naira and you wonder…
Just imagine more than six hundred billion worth of drugs that I said he has. Just imagine that money. In Ikorodu (in Lagos State), we had the largest seizure of cocaine in the history of this country that’s worth more than 200 million dollars. Imagine that in the hands of criminal elements.
So, definitely, there is a nexus and that’s why we are dealing decisively (through) supply reduction, so to ensure that we stop access and availability to those drugs and, again, deny those that are into the business, from enjoying the proceeds of the crime. That’s why we go not only after them (and) after the drug exhibits, but also after all they have acquired, whether in their bank accounts, their properties, their cars…we seize them through court orders and get them forfeited to the government of Nigeria.
Healthnika: Thank you so much…different perspectives. People have been wondering why General Marwa is succeeding.
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Interviewers: Dr. Tuyi Mebawondu and Dele Ogundahunsi Featured Image: Healthnika Photos: The Star and NDLEA
