Ladesope Ladelokun 
•9,553 convicted in two years, 12m kg of drugs seized in less than five years –NDLEA
•Young ladies now beg us to hide drugs to escape police arrest –Uber driver
•It’s time to treat substance abuse as national emergency –NMA
Over the years, the worrying spate of drug abuse in Nigeria has continued to spark concerns. LADESOPE LADELOKUN reports that Nigeria may be engulfed in its resultant aftermath if drastic and deliberate action plan were not put in place and thoroughly followed
The penetrating gaze of the fierce-looking young men sitting in front of an uncompleted building in the Arigbawonwo area of Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State almost made this reporter stutter at the start of a conversation as they puffed at wraps of king-size marijuana on a cold Tuesday morning.
Inside the building was a drug retailer surrounded by young men, who took turns to get their favourite hard drugs of various variants. Already conquered by “Colos”(Colorado), a cocktail of psychotropic drugs, one had slept off on the bare floor, making him an object of mockery among his comrades.
At first, an attempt to buy two wraps of weed by this reporter was resisted right outside the building after posing as a new convert to the tribe of weed smokers.
However, subsequent efforts yielded fruits, making the retailer lower his guard after consistent patronage for three days. The retailer, who gave his name as Mujeeb, told how his foray into the drug business began, his losses, and his embarrassing moments.
I slept off after taking ‘’colos” at my stand, N200,000, everything disappeared – Drug merchant
Speaking about how his best friend introduced him to drugs in secondary school, he said he was told it would boost his confidence to woo beautiful girls and make him get admired by the ‘big’ boys in school.
“I started smoking weed when I was in SS2. I started with cigarettes in SS1. My friend, Waheed, told me I would be loved by the ‘happening’ girls and the big boys in school. We used to buy from my current supplier. I knew him from way back.”
Schooling this reporter on how to advance to Colorado without regrets, Mujeeb, who claimed his father left his mother at a tender age, said: “Anytime you want to take Mashalla (Colorado), just make sure you have your food ready. My first experience was not pleasant. After taking it, I sat, then I suddenly fell. I was using my ears to rub the floor. See the marks here. They are still there. It was after I ate ,drank malt, and slept that I fully got back to my normal self.”
On why attention is shifting away from Indian hemp to Loud (comprising heavy dose of formalin, an embalming substance used to preserve human corpses) and Colorado despite being more expensive, he explained:“Loud and Colorado, depending on the size you are buying, can be sold for N500, N1,000. They are more expensive than Indian hemp. You can get Indian hemp for N100, N200. Indian hemp smells. It doesn’t have any advantage. But for Loud, it will make you eat well. Before I started selling, I spent as much as N10,000 a day to buy “Colos.””
Sharing his bitter experience as a drug retailer , he told Sunday Telegraph how he was robbed after Colorado weakened him and made him sleep.
“There was a time my money was stolen. I had taken Colorado and was no longer myself. I slept off on the floor,where I sold drugs, but over N200,000 in cash of what I sold and the drugs I had left were stolen. The following morning, I couldn’t present anything to my boss, but my boss was kind. He didn’t bother me because he trusted me.”
With the ubiquity of drugs like Cannabis, Methamphetamine, (otherwise known as Mkpuru Mmiri in Igbo), Colorado, SK, and others on the streets of Kano, Lagos, Ogun, Abia, Rivers states, and other parts of Nigeria, observers argue that Nigeria may be sitting on a time bomb waiting to explode with cataclysmic consequences.
This is even as some security experts have established a nexus between drug abuse and what they describe as Nigeria’s spiralling crime wave.
According to the Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Gen. Buba Marwa(rtd) 90 per cent of all criminalities in Nigeria, ranging from banditry to insurgency, kidnapping to rape, are linked to the use of illicit drugs.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in a 2024 report affirming the worsening drug crisis across the world, stated that 228 million people consume cannabis, while 60 million people consume opioids; 30 million people use amphetamines, and 23 million use cocaine.
Scary figures
Juxtaposing the weight of the scourge with UNODC’s global survey of the prevalence of drug use and the results for Nigeria, medical doctor and Chief Executive Officer of Compassionate Care Recovery Initiative (CCRI), a Non-Governmental Organisation working within the treatment and rehabilitation space, Dokun Adedeji, said: “Globally, the prevalence rate of use is 5.6%. In Nigeria, this is 14.4% – almost triple the global average. This translates to about 14-15million users in Nigeria.
“The total population of Liberia, Mauritania, The Gambia, and Guinea Bissau is 13 million. This means, therefore, that the population of users in Nigeria as of 2018, when the report was published, can make up a nation.
“The survey covered a range from 15-64 years of age. The highest use rate was between the ages of 25 and 39. It was also found that one of every four users is female.”
Uber drivers: Young ladies now beg us to hide drugs to escape police arrest
An Uber driver, Jimi Adekoya, described what he called the surge in the use of hard drugs by young ladies as worrying.
“Young girls hide drugs in their bags. That is the trend now. They book Uber at night to go to clubs and visit their boyfriends. On four occasions, four girls who hid drugs in their bags were arrested in my car. What policemen do is to go straight to girls’ bags. Sometimes, young girls tell me to hide their drugs. What I do now is to ask passengers if they carry drugs. If they carry, I reject them. But the police are always kind enough to spare me because they understand I’m just a driver trying to survive. “
‘I do it to have sex with multiple men at the same time’
Another driver, Festus Udi, told how a passenger confessed that taking hard drugs was the only way she could sleep with multiple men at the same time.
“A passenger told me if she doesn’t take drugs, she can’t do some of the things she does like allowing multiple men to sleep with her at the same time and doing rounds that would ordinarily be impossible without hard drugs. She said there was no way she could do these without relying heavily on drugs,’’ Udi revealed.
How I make N60,000 weekly from my Lekki customer
Sharing with Sunday Telegraph how he helps his customer conceal her drug habit from family and friends, another driver, Ahmed Adedeji, said all he does every week is to drive his customer through certain routes in Lagos, just to take her regular hard drugs.
He said:“There is a customer inside Lekki Phase I. I drive her three times a week. All I do is pick her up around 10:00pm to 11:00 pm at night. I drive from Lekki to Oworonshoki and drive round the third mainland three times. All the lady does is to inject drugs into her veins while the journey lasts. She does that so that the effect of the drugs would have subsided before she gets home.
“She told me the reason was to prevent anyone, or any of her family members or friends from knowing about her drug habit. She said none of her family members knows she takes hard drugs, but I make at least N60,000 from her every week.”
Parents lament
Some parents have expressed concerns over the spate of substance abuse among young Nigerians. Baring her mind, a petty trader and mother of three, Dupe Awosanya, said: “The people bringing in the drugs are the people the government should check. They are destroying the lives of many young people, but they want their children to do well in life. If you stay long here, you will see at least, one person under the influence of hard drugs that is acting in a strange manner. He could just run suddenly and start to act like a mad man, dancing without any song. See children getting mad everywhere.”
Another parent, Taye Shonubi, said: “It is really getting to a frightening level. Everywhere you go now, you see people misbehaving. Drugs everywhere. The danger is that some children from decent homes can easily be influenced. It wasn’t like this before. And the police that should check them just see them as another means of survival. Once they get bribed, they release them to continue to take these drugs,” Shonubi alleges
Marijuana in Lagos school?
In a video that was said to be recorded in April but went viral recently, students of Excel College, Ejigbo, Lagos, could be seen smoking what’s suspected to be marijuana, drinking, and dancing. The half clad students, in the said video, passed the said substance among themselves as they smoked and grinned away.
Meanwhile, a statement signed by the Lagos State Police Command’s Public Relations Officer, SP Abimbola Adebisi, stated that upon sighting the video, the Command’s Commissioner of Police, Olohundare Jimoh, ordered the State Criminal Investigation Department(SCID) in Panti to launch an investigation into the incident.
The statement reads, “The CP orders the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, to take over the investigation into the incident. The Lagos State Police Command has commenced an investigation into the viral video from the boys’ hostel of Excel College, Ejigbo, Lagos, where students were seen drinking, smoking, and dancing.
“The incident was discovered to have occurred in April 2025, but the video surfaced online recently, sparking public annoyance and condemnation.”
It added: “The principal of the school, who also serves as the proprietor, was invited for questioning and stated that the students seen in the viral video had already graduated and left the institution. Nonetheless, the school management is cooperating fully with investigators from the SCID to uncover the full circumstances surrounding the incident.
“All parties are working collaboratively to ensure that such disturbing and inappropriate behaviour does not recur within the school environment. Investigation is currently ongoing as mentioned above, and the outcome will be made public.”
No evidence-based survey to prove substance abuse has worsened – NDLEA
In an interview with the Spokesperson of the NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, the agency dismissed the claim in some quarters that Nigeria’s drug crisis has worsened. According to him, no evidence-based survey supports such a claim, noting that the NDLEA is winning the war against illicit drugs.
“Definitely, we are not losing the war. You don’t draw conclusions without a survey. Only a survey can tell you. The last survey conducted in Nigeria was published in 2018. We are just on the verge of conducting another survey. Preparations are on between the NDLEA, UNODC and other stakeholders to conduct another survey. Until we have an evidence-based survey conducted, we can’t draw conclusions. No doubt, there are quite a lot of speculations out there, but you can’t draw a conclusion on whether the situation has deteriorated or improved,” he told Sunday Telegraph.
“But one thing that’s established is that we are not where we were six years ago. There have been quite a lot of efforts on the part of the government, on the part of NDLEA, even the citizens themselves. This conversation is because there is a level of awareness. There is a level of determination and commitment by the people themselves as well as the agency coordinating the whole effort on the problems and dangers of substance abuse in our country. No country has won the war, but there are coordinated and intentional efforts to win the battle and there are very strong indications that we are on the right path.” he added.
‘9,553 convicted in two years, 12m kg of drugs seized in less than five years’
Speaking on the successes recorded by the agency, Babafemi said: “We are doing the right thing at the moment. That is driving the whole effort on two major pillars, which are drug supply reduction, which NDLEA is leading. That is where we make the arrests, the seizures, the prosecution of offenders. If you look at the volume of drugs that has been seized in the last four and a half years, we are talking of over 12 million kg. That is talking about cities filled up with bags of illicit drugs that have been mopped up in the last four and a half years.
“And if you look at those that have been convicted, we are talking about well over 9,553 in the last two years and 12,883 convictions in the last four and a half years. All of these are indications that we are on the right track to winning the war. If you look at the number of arrests made in the last four and a half years, I’m talking about over 69, 107 persons arrested, including 101 barons. That’s huge.”
Our society slowly losing its future to drug abuse, menace may swallow Nigeria – Psychologist
For a psychologist, Dr Etim John, the entire country may be engulfed in the resultant aftermath of the power of drug abuse if drastic and deliberate action plans were not put in place. He told Sunday Telegraph that ,unlike in the past, people no longer nurse any fear of being criticised or ostracised from society for doing drugs.
According to him, the abuse of drugs is indeed eating into the fabrics of the socio-economic lives of Nigerians, affecting everything along its path as it garners momentum and followers.
“Before now, it was uncommon and anyone, who was found culpable would be castigated and ostracised from civilised social participation of any kind. The story is different today. From the Mallam’s Kiosk to the drug peddler along the streets, and indeed the highbrow pharmaceutical dispensaries, anyone can get any form of drug and get hooked on it.
“The youths have overtaken the elite. In the street corners, the suburbs, primary and secondary schools, at apprentice workshops and the likes, our youths and ‘future leaders’ indulge in the use of drugs to an abusive point. The trend is even more noticeable in our tertiary institutions.”
Etim further argued that there was a need to be proactive before Nigeria is swallowed by the menace of drug abuse.
“There are more reasons to worry than the drumbeat of an impending war. Our society is slowly losing its future to drug abuse. What is there not to worry about? We must become proactive. We must begin to address this menace before we are all swallowed up in idle betrayal of our future due to drug abuse.” Commenting on the psychological effects of drug abuse, Etim said they could either be short term or long term.
“Psychological effects of drug abuse can be seen or considered along short term and long term effects. Permit me to add a definitive form to the question of drug abuse: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition (DMS-4) defines drug abuse as “a maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress.”
“The effects of drug abuse depend on the type of drug, any other substances that a person is using, and their health history beyond any physical or presumed state of health. Some are fine with a little amount or a particular drug, while the same quantity can send another ‘soaring’ through the roof on a virtual parachute of mental instability,” he explained.
Why all hands must be on deck to tackle menace
On who should be held responsible for the problems of drug abuse, Etim explained: “The society in general should be blamed. You, me, educational exposure, et al. Someone from a good family background can be influenced by peer pressure. One cannot really blame the family. But then, we can say the values instilled in that child wasn’t that strong. But don’t forget that, potentially, a teenager, who is transcending into an early life of independence would want to be experimental. That is the human nature.
“Psychologically, we would look at the issue and approach it from there. So, holistically, it is the society, government, the institutions that our children pass through.”
“We must resensitise the minds of people. The idea that it is not my problem will not cut it. It will be your problem tomorrow if it is not controlled. Every hand must be on deck to see that the right policies are made to protect our children,” he added.
Treat drug abuse as national emergency – NMA
Commenting, National First Vice President of the Nigerian Medical Association, Benjamin Olowojebutu, told Sunday Telegraph that there was a need to treat drug abuse as a national emergency.
“One of the things we do as a nation is to know that this is now a national emergency in the public health space. We must improve access to psychological evaluation and reduce access of people to substances they abuse. And NOA must begin to speak against this drug abuse in different languages, so that everyone knows the harm they can cause,” he admonished.
