Kola Kehinde/
Drug abuse in Nigeria is as severe as ever.
In my mail earlier this week came a “change.org” petition organized by Binta Suleiman, the mail was titled “Join hands to fight drug abuse and build a better future for our youth”.
Some might believe drug abuse is something that pertains majorly to touts and people that work close to these touts like public transport drivers, but overtime, we have come to find out this vice has crept more into society than we can imagine.
Sadly, drug abuse and its’ agents have also been on a ‘catch them young’ mission over the years. It has managed to creep into secondary schools, making victims of people who are still at a stage where they lack the maturity to make a lot of decisions by themselves.
A couple of students of the University of Lagos decided to organize an awareness program based in a secondary school at Sabo named “Lagos City Senior College”, the school was receptive to the program and the student organizers were able to pull it off but some major and slightly disturbing observations were made that deserve to be discussed.
I spoke to Fope Arokoyu, a member of the group of students who organized the awareness program at the school and this is what she had to say about the event and the observations she made from it;
(NB: Statements have been slightly edited for ease of reading)
I asked questions relating to necessary background information on the awareness program like how the idea came about and how it was executed. Below is a summary of her answers.
“There’s a course in my faculty (Faculty of Management Sciences, UNILAG) named “Corporate Social Responsibility”. The course teaches us about how we as individuals can give back to society.
So we are put into groups, and each group is given the opportunity to pick a topic that they think they want to work on. My group chose the topic “Drug Abuse”, coming from the angle of prevention.
So the decision of where to carry out the project, how to carry it out and all of that is placed on the members of the group.
We decided to organize an event to create awareness amongst secondary school students about dangers and ills of drug abuse.
We selected a secondary school named Lagos City Senior College located at Sabo, Lagos.
The planning process began from there, getting a budget and all of that. That part took about three weeks to a month or so.”
Thankfully, the project was a success, as group member, Fope even went to her twitter to celebrate upon completion.
Though, when I asked her if there is anything else she would like to say about the experience, one major thing she noticed and felt she should share was the level of knowledge these kids already had on drugs.
In her words, “they are more informed than even ourselves. And they were mentioning names that even we were not familiar with and we are like 5–6 classes above these people. And its’ so rampant because while we were there, the teachers even pointed out that they would have liked us to do this another time because some of the students who are apparently already into the vice being discussed were not around.”
Now, could this level of knowledge about drugs these students have be a good or a bad thing?
The level of awareness where they begin to drop more names than even the organizers are aware of, would it make them more liable to using these drugs due to curiosity and a yearn for exploring these things on a deeper/more intimate level, disregarding the likely consequences they have been taught?
Or would the likely consequences if well imbibed in them keep them away from it?
Would their vast knowledge of drugs enable them to identify and stay away from this vice?
By raising these points, I think these are the questions or worries, members of the group including Fope have about the matter.
Debunking of myths that portray drugs in a positive light is necessary, some students that might be performing poorly in their academics could get introduced to drugs as an aid to study better especially when they begin to approach their external exams (WAEC, JAMB…). A lot of anxiety builds up in them around these times allowing them to be easily swayed to any recommended solution to their worries.
From peer pressure to influences of social media to constantly being in the wrong environment, there are many things that are liable to derail young people. Being able to build strong minds that would help young people uphold their positive values wherever they find themselves is key. Let these people know they do not need drugs to achieve anything they want to achieve either academically or creatively neither do they need it to have fun or to be seen as “cool”.
Information on drugs would definitely get to them whether we want it to or not, and it is either passed to them in a promotional manner or in a manner that discourages it.
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