Advocate community-based approach to prevention

With the alarming and increasing rate of drug and substance abuse in the South-South region, stakeholders at a forum in Yenagoa, Bayelsa have advocated a community-based approach to prevention and curbing the menace.

They also recommended the engagement of Guidance and Counselling professionals in both private and public schools to stem the tide.The multi-stakeholder dialogue, organised by Search for Common Ground (SCG), and funded by the European Union (EU), lamented the increasing rate of drug and substance abuse and also suggested a quick action plan to engage the government, security agencies, and community leaders to end the scourge.

The dialogue, which engaged representatives from the Bayelsa State Government, heads of security agencies, including the Nigeria Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), the Nigerian Police, the Nigerian Army, the Civil Defence Corps, civil society organisations, among other groups, called for a collective approach to eradicating drug abuse from the region.

The stakeholders made the demand at a one-day multi-stakeholder state-level dialogue on the theme, “Community-Based Approaches to Prevention of Drug Abuse in Bayelsa, State,” as part of the European Union-funded project titled, Community-centred Approach to Transforming Criminality and Violence in the Niger Delta.”

While calling for the establishment of a Bayelsa Multi-Stakeholder Drug Prevention Taskforce, with clear terms of reference and the allocation of seed funding for a pilot package to commit the personnel, the stakeholders pointed out that a community-centred approach reduces demands, weakens criminal recruitment and strengthens peace.

In his keynote address, the state’s Commissioner for Health, Prof. Seiyefa Brisibe, represented by Dr Ebikapaye Okoyen, identified the driving factors of substance and drug abuse to include poverty, unemployment, low educational engagement and school dropout, social dislocations and family breakdown, peer pressure and weak enforcement.

The Sub-Component Manager, Search for Common Ground, Solomon Adejo, said multi-stakeholder state-level dialogue on the community-based approaches to prevention of drug abuse in Bayelsa State was a component of the Community-Centred Approach to Transforming Criminality and Violence in the intervention Niger Delta project, which seeks to address systemic drivers of conflict in the Niger Delta.

In his presentation, the Assistant State Commandant of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Godwin Erepa, lamented that the difficult terrain of the state, which is predominantly riverine, poses a major challenge to the agency’s fight against drug abuse, stressing that the agency currently has no speed boats for its operations.

The NDLEA official also accused community leaders, particularly in the hinterlands, of being uncooperative, as they have repeatedly frustrated men of the drug agency from enforcing arrests by making their communities either inaccessible or difficult to exit after arrests of suspects.

Also speaking, the Chairman of the Bayelsa State Drug Abuse Prevention and Rehabilitation Committee, BADARPAC, Dr Peter Owonaro, disclosed that the state government rehabilitation centre would be put to use soon, adding that the facility would provide detoxification, rehabilitation and post-rehabilitation engagement and follow-up services at an affordable rate to enable the poor and rural dwellers to access the services.

Briefs