Children’s Day: expert asked youths to shun drugs

Emeka Ibemere

  "The one thing all children have in common is their rights. Every child has the right to survive and thrive, to be educated, to be free from violence and abuse, to participate and to be heard”, the above statement is credited to United Nations’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

However, by the resolution 836(IX) of 14 December 1954, the General Assembly recommended that all countries institute a Universal Children's Day, to be observed as a day of worldwide fraternity and understanding between children.

 It recommended that the Day was to be observed also as a day of activity devoted to promoting the ideals and objectives of the Charter and the welfare of the children of the world. The Assembly suggested to governments that the Day be observed on the date and in the way which each considers appropriate. The date 20 November marks the day on which the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1989.

Decades after the world made a promise to children: “that we would do everything in our power to protect and promote their rights to survive and thrive, to learn and grow, to make their voices heard and to reach their full potential. In spite of the overall gains, there are many children who have fallen even further behind. Old challenges have combined with new problems to deprive many children of their rights and the benefits of development. To meet these challenges, and to reach those children who are hardest to reach, we need new ways of thinking and new ways of doing - for adults and children”.

So this years’ Children’s Day is today as the kids faces so many problems in Nigeria from drug abuse, child abuse, kidnapping, child labour  declining infant mortality to declining school enrollment

to denial of their rights. Too many children are languishing in prisons while many are serving jail sentences with their mothers and are raised from the walls of prisons across Nigeria. The most debilitating aspect of the whole abuse is drug abuse and use of kids as drug couriers.

Aliyu Sule, Lagos State Commander of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, speaking on what they have for this year’s Children’s Day even said preparations are in top gear towards educating of children on the dangers of drug abuse and trafficking. Aliyu blamed the society especially, parents for their failure to be good role models for their children. According to him, parents have abdicated their responsibility of raising good, decent, and religious children because of materialism. He said the failure of moral values, lack of home training, quality parental care are the bane of kids involved in drug abuse.

“I think if I may go back to the little experience that I have, I would say lack of proper education, second poor parental care and parents are supposed to be role models to their children but when parents coming home drunk before their children, you know what it means. Again lack of values, the lost of values I meant, is in the olden days, when you get money, you will explain how you get the money”, he added. “People will ask you how you come around with the money. But because you can’t give reason how you get the money, it would be difficult for you to use the money, you will tend to hide it.  But these days you see people building high sky scrappers, moving expensive cars and nobody is questioning the source of the money. That is lack or lost of values I’m talking about”

“In those days parents do not do any wrong thing in the presence of their children but these days, parents smoke before their children, send them an errand to go and buy the drugs for them, some smoke before their parents, and drink alcohol before them. Parents are no longer good role models for their children; forgetting that they are the first contact the kids have before other agents of the society”.

Aliyu stated that parents are the first contact that children always have and then they tend to learn from their parents and whatever the adult ones do, they intend to imitate the adults thinking that it’s the best way of life. “So these are the factors influencing children and youths into drug abuse and trafficking”.

According to him, peer group pressure, lack of drug education, awareness on the dangers of the drug, and too much socialization contributes the use of drugs by children and youths. He disclosed that youths are not well educated on the dangers of drugs and that was why NDLEA are making effort to see that drug education is enshrined in the academic curriculum of Lagos State.

“The youths don’t know the effect of taking drugs and its consequences. So lack of education is the main bane. They need proper education on the dangers of drug. Some of them go into it for experimentation, which is because their mate is taking it, they decided to take it. Those in entertainment industry, footballers, wrestlers and other sportsmen and women are into it”, Aliyu revealed.

“Advertising agents are not helping matters by advertising these dangerous drugs on televisions, radios and other social media in the process helps to push the drugs into the society and the targets are the youths. Collectively, when you are fighting drug abuse, all hands must be on the deck, it’s not going to be NDLEA responsibility alone”.

Aliyu urged every stakeholder to rally round and see that the menace is eradicated before it eradicates the future generation of Nigerians. “Parents, governments at all levels, media, teachers, market women and men, churches, mosques and everybody must be involved because the youths we are talking about are the future of this country”. On how to make the drug education nationally accepted, the drug Czar said the Lagos State Command of the agency has succeeded in some schools in Lagos State to inculcate drug education curriculum in their syllabus. He said the agency is working hard to see that every school in Nigeria education system included drug education in their curriculum and syllabus to create the awareness on the deadly consequences of illicit drug abuse and planned it for all levels of education, primary, tertiary and secondary schools in the country. According to him, the state education boards across the country are going to recruit teachers for the drug education system.

“The state will recruit teachers for it and some of them have the knowledge already and some have been in touch with us already. In Lagos here, we have Drug Free Clubs. They have the teachers, the councelliors and in the local governments, people have to be trained for it to work”. Aliyu further explained that his agency is working through the headquarters to send a bill to the National Assembly, to make it as law to create drug education in school syllabus.

“My headquarters are doing something about it, I can talk about my own state and Lagos State is trying to adopt it”, he explained.  Between January and May, the state command said they have arrested  223 suspects whose age bracket are between 18 to 20 years and between 38, and 50 years but explained that the over all, youths are in majority while  some of them who are above 50 are very few.  He said the arrests were made through information volunteered by good Nigerians and urged others to give them information on those dealing on illicit drug and abuse. On cannabis farm plantations in Lagos State, he said: “We are still working on one, we saw the preparation, and we have known the land and its Indian hemp that they want to plant there but we don’t want to preempt it. It’s only on two areas that we have the farm land before, Ikorodu and Epe axis because their lands are fertile for it”.

Last year, 129 convicts including i8 year’s old suspects were sentenced to jail while this year only 40 people have been convicted in the last five months. On what should be done to take youths away from drug abuse and trafficking, Aliyu said parents, governments, and every other stakeholder should rise and fight the scourge. “My advice to parents is that they should know that they are the role models for their children and they are the first contact a child will first encounter before any other thing. The first education for a child is his or her parents and followed by school or the teacher as the second agents”, he counseled.

“Parents should know that they are role models to their children and any decent life they live is being copied by their children as well as any bad life.  Even if you want to smoke, please don’t smoke in their presence; if you want to drink, don’t do it in their presence because they are copying you and it’s an abuse”.

He disclosed that for those who have been addicted to drugs, that his agency can help rehabilitate such children and tasked parents to try and do more and in a case they couldn’t do it that they should report such cases to their agencies spread across the country.

“We in Lagos State command, we have the facility where we counsel drug addict, so bring them on time so that we can treat them and send them back to you”, he explained.

“The only way the government can do better is to provide them skill acquisition  project, provide people who can take proper care of them because when you send them back to their parents, because the parents do not know what to engage them with, they go back to drugs. Idle hands are the devils workshop, so parents should try and have something to do after they leave rehab homes. Something that they can learn –carpentry, bricklayer, mechanics hair dressing, barber and others”. But the quest for money would not allow them to learn it when everybody is looking for short cut to make money?

“When you talk sense into them, they will hear. Sometimes, it’s not every body that succeeds in making it through short cut that succeeds, and those who make it through short cuts always have their whole career crashed. I will advice children as they celebrate their day today, to stay clear away from drugs. With drugs, they cannot go anywhere, and it will end the person’s career. Where are the greatest musicians that live on drugs today?”

“Drug has finished them. Have you heard any person who takes drug that has ever become the President, Senator or governor of his country?”

 “So, they should better do away with it or it finished themselves completely. But if you have very good career and you want to achieve greatness, the sky will be your limit but you have to shun drugs or drugs will kill you completely. And for those who are jailed for it, and they think that after their sentences, they can be the same again, it’s not true because there is a mark of an ex-convict hanging on the person and the person is finished”, Aliyu warned.