NDLEA Boss vows to clamp down on illicit drug traffickers… Agency to unveil Call Centres

Emmanuel Alfred

The Chief Executive Officer of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, BRIG. GEN. Mohamed Buba Marwa (RETD), OFR, has vowed to clamp down on illicit drug barons and traffickers in the country.

He made this known at the Unveiling of the Programme of Activities ahead of the 2022 UN International Day Against Drug Abuse & Illicit Drug Trafficking held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja on Monday, JUNE 20, 2022.

Buba Marwa who used the opportunity to thank His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, for his ‘unwavering support for the Agency’ said that the week long activities will climax on June 26, 2022, a day set aside by the United Nations to strengthen action and cooperation in achieving a world free of drug abuse.

“The theme for this year, ‘Addressing Drug Challenges in Health and Humanitarian Crises’ has made us look at the drug problem through the lens of public health and also tackling such as a broader social problem rather than through the conventional, narrow, criminal matter approach’ Marwa said.

He further added that ‘It has therefore, become prudent to initiate mechanisms and measures that are proactively extenuating.’ In our case, the National Drug Control Master Plan (NDCMP) 2021-2025, launched last November, has incorporated components that tend to the health concerns of drug abuse’, Hence, the need to reflect on the different approach to solving this challenge.

While discussing the giant strides made by the Agency under his stewardship, Brig Marwa said that about 8,000 drug users were counselled and rehabilitated, in most cases through brief interventionsin 2021 and an additional 3,523 also benefitted from the counselling and treatment in NDLEA facilities during the first five months of 2022.

Speaking on the Agency’s drive to shut the tap of illicit flow of drugs, he announced that over 17,647 offenders including 10 drug barons between January 2021 and May 2022 have been arrested with more than 2,369 of them convicted and jailed within the same period while 154,667.339kg drugs have been seized in the first five months of this year alone.

In a bid to fight the issue of stigmatization, he added that the Agency will be unveiling the NDLEA Call Centre and it will be manned by professionals and experts in counselling, psychotherapy, psychology, psychiatry and more to offer help to drug users who will make use of our tollfree lines to seek counselling 24/7.

He then said that the forthcoming sensitization training on Drug Prevention, Treatment and Care (DPTC) for Governors’ Wives will bolster the effort to ensure that the consequences of drug abuse are nipped in the bud and prevented from snowballing into a public health problem that would overwhelm our society in the long run. This year’s theme will go a long way in directing our attention to an area that requires collective effort to stave off future catastrophes.

The NDLEA Chairman ended by thanking everyone who has supported the NDLEA in their fight against drug abuse.