The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and the Federal Ministry of Education have agreed on a compulsory drug integrity test for students of tertiary institutions and the review of current secondary school curriculum to include drug education.
These were part of the agreement reached between the organisations when the NDLEA chairman/chief executive, Brig.-Gen. Mohamed Marwa (rtd) led a delegation of his management team to a meeting with the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa in Abuja, on Wednesday.
Marwa had during the meeting commended the minister for his proactive approach to his job while highlighting the devastating effect of substance abuse on the country’s youthful population.
He noted that the fight against illicit drugs is a fight for the souls of the Nigerian youth.
According to him, “The purpose of this visit is to seek collaboration with this esteemed ministry in our collective efforts towards drug control in Nigeria. Our focus basically will be on schools and educational institutions.
“There are millions of our children that are under the supervision of this ministry, and it is very critical. The drug scourge, as we all know, is very high in Nigeria.
“So, we are actually fighting for the souls of our children. Now, we also know that the drug use is exacerbating criminal activities. That is, the Boko Haram, the terrorism, banditry, and so on.
“We know that without drugs, they wouldn’t be able to do what they are doing, because they wouldn’t do all these criminal activities in their right senses.
“So, in our own way, we are contributing to the fight against insecurity in the country. Now, through law enforcement action, we have continued to deal mortal blows to the drug cartels. We know that through the seizures, arrests, convictions, and assets forfeiture, we’re doing our best,” Marwa said.
He added with the support of President Bola Tinubu, the anti-narcotic agency has within the last two years, arrested 40,887 criminal elements, got the conviction of 8,682 and seized 5,507 metric tons of illicit drugs.
“In fact, from January last year to the present, opioids, that’s tramadol mostly, that we have seized, are in excess of one billion pills, which is worth more than N1 trillion,” the NDLEA boss said.
In his response, the minister described the drug scourge as a huge problem that must be tackled headlong.
Talking about the areas of collaboration, the minister suggested forming a technical working group, inter-ministerial working group between the ministry and the NDLEA.
“We are reviewing the curriculum now for secondary school. And that is why I have asked the Director of Senior Secondary School to come, to be here and then we find a way to cascade it down to primary school.
“But we need to get both primary school and secondary school and add this to their curriculum. But the one for secondary school, we can definitely do that now. We are just developing their new curriculum now,” Alausa said.
