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Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has intensified its campaign across the Niger Delta region to end cultism and drug abuse among youths as part of efforts to sustain peace in the area.
Acting Managing Director, NDDC, Emmanuel Audu-Ohwavborua, yesterday, led officials of the commission to Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, where they sensitised students, drawn from various secondary schools in the state, to the dangers of cultism, drug abuse and other social vices.
The commission, which earlier held similar programmes in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states, with support from the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Umana Okon Umana, also distributed educational tabs configured with one-year subscriptions and smart school bags to the students.
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Audu-Ohwavborua, who was represented by the NDDC Director of Youths and Sports, Offiong Ephraim, at the one-day seminar tagged: “The Dangers of Drug Abuse and Cultism,” said, apart from illicit hard drugs, students should abstain from taking drugs without prescriptions from medical experts.
Audu-Ohwavborua said there was a correlation between drug abuse and cultism, stressing that secret cult members were always induced by drugs to engage in social vices.
He said: “We have had a problem in this country, not just in this country, about drugs and drug abuse. So it is always good to see a medical practitioner or a doctor before you consume anything into your body.
“But the one we feel concern about is the use of illicit, illegal and all kinds of drug. We saw that even the students are more compelled to doing that than even adults.
“We have come to discover than even in secondary schools now, some of you, I don’t know where you copy those things from, try to sniff all kinds of things you see. Of what use is that going to be to you? It is definitely going to destroy you.”
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