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Foursome sex addicts, drugs and pornography 

By Emmanuel Onwubiko 
22 April 2019   |   1:58 am
For three weeks up until Monday 15th April 2019, I spent my yearly vacation in the United Kingdom. In the middle of this vacation I was rudely awoken by the shock of two negative reports flashed in the London Metro newspaper.

For three weeks up until Monday 15th April 2019, I spent my yearly vacation in the United Kingdom. In the middle of this vacation I was rudely awoken by the shock of two negative reports flashed in the London Metro newspaper. The first of these two negative reports that literally made front page was this outlandish claim by the octogenarian minister of Agriculture of Nigeria Mr. Audu Ogbeh that Nigerian upper class now orders their sharwama from the United Kingdom through daily delivery by the British Airways. 

This dubious claim made most readers of that paper to have good laugh at us as a nation whereby the cabinet level ministers occupy their times with road side gossips. The story is a reminiscence of a fictional account in the book ‘the beautiful ones are not yet born’ authored by a Ghanaian novelist about some of the lavish lifestyles of the immediate post independence leaders of Ghana which actually led to the overthrow of the then government of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. Currently, the wife of the dictator of Cameroon is known to be shopping in the West for her breakfasts. 
 
The second story that followed almost immediately was the reported death of three students out of four of the famed Federal University of Technology (FUTO) Owerri and the best polytechnic in Nigeria – Nekede Polytechnics. Federal polytechnics Nekede Owerri is rated by the regulatory body as the best of the nation’s polytechnics. Now this calamity has blighted the image of that institution. These students died because they embarked on rounds of hard drugs- fueled sexual activities between three boys who took turns to have fun with a girl who herself is (was) a student in same school. 

The lone surviving ‘veteran’ of the maniacal sexual depravity has just been claimed by punch newspaper to have also died. If confirmed, it would mean that the vicious circle of death is now complete far from the initial trinity of deaths that was recorded when the news hit the air waves. This toxic act of moral depravity and the crime of drug addiction and infestation bring to the fore the larger issue of the consequences of reliance on performance enhancing drugs for sex vis-a-vis the addiction to the worrying trend of pornography amongst students in Nigeria. 
 
Pornography in Nigeria has even taken a flamboyant dimension with a certain celebrity DJ and a wannabe blogger who regularly (weekly) pays out #50,000 to any adventurous girl brave or foolish enough to display her nakedness on the live internet streaming video programme of this emerging online entertainment blog, supported by some of the top rated musicians in Nigeria. This story came about the same time it was reported that the Videos and Films Censor’s board in Nigeria confiscated hundreds of cartons of pornographic films from some pirates who sell pirated pornographic videos to the unsuspecting Nigerian public. There is therefore the need for policy planners and implementors to quickly but deliberately return to the drawing board if any, and analytically take critical look at the trinity of hard drugs, pornography and students with a view to working out achievable plans on how to check this rising menace that has afflicted the Nigerian school system.

Also pornography and hard drugs are threats to quality delivery of services by public servants some of whom rely so much on hard drugs and usually spend quality office hours to be glued to pornographic images and videos on their phones. Some even use publicly funded data to watch pornography. Impeccable sources told me from Owerri that the Federal University of Technology in Owerri, federal polytechnic Nekede and virtually all public and private universities in the country suffer from the malaise of hard drugs and sexual activities by the students driven mainly by their addiction to porns. Most of these schools owned especially by the federal and state governments lack a decent housing asset for students thereby compelling students to stay off campuses whereby they enjoy relative and comparative freedoms to do with their bodies as they please. 

The particular hostel in Owerri where that foursome sexual act was conducted is a notorious spot for the selling and consumption of hard drugs as I am told by many students of those schools aforementioned. The school authorities deliberately feign ignorance of the scale of these crises in their schools and thereby allow their students to wallow in moral debauchery and to ceaselessly engage in indecent sexual activities fueled mostly by hard drugs and pornography. The borders are so porous to an extent that pirated pornographic materials floods the markets through some organised criminal gangs headed by some Chinese. We have a big problem on our hands. Unfortunately the schools through their ‘I don’t care’ management boards pretend as if these issues are out of reach of students. 

This informed the reason why as soon as this sad incident happened in Owerri, the spokesmen of both the Federal University of Technology Owerri, and Federal polytechnic Owerri, were more concerned about putting up half-baked propaganda defenses out in the media and have till now not told Nigerians what the respective managements are doing to check these far-reaching social problems. Even the minister of education has said nothing. This is however not the time to keep silent but a time for sober reflection to remind these school managers that they and indeed we as citizens of this nation need to confront this hydra-headed monsters because we are in one way or the other involved in some ways as elders and parents of those students. The Nigerian national assembly and the respective state legislatures need to do the needful to confront head-long these menace tearing our society apart. The implications of doing nothing is that we run the risk of producing political leaders who are drugs and sexual addicts and the polity will suffer. 

 
In the western jurisdiction such as United Kingdom, United States of America and Australia, authorities are not sleeping on their duty of care for their students and responsibility to enforce rules against illicit drugs, pornography and wild sexual escapades by their students. Research on these critical issues showed that from the 1970s on, rates of alcohol consumption and binge drinking have remained fairly constant. 

Researchers  in Western Europe say that college students have always represented a large portion of the population abusing drugs and alcohol on a regular basis. On changes in Drug Abuse Trends in College these scholars asserted that although alcohol abuse has maintained a steady presence on college campuses, the type and frequency of other substances has varied throughout the years. Some researchers suggest drug abuse is cyclical. This means that as concern over one drug rises, so do prevention efforts. 

Also the argued that, as use falls for that drug, so does the effort to reduce its use. This can then lead to lack of education and resurgence in abuse of that drug in certain jurisdictions. They believe that some of the things that impact which drugs are targets for abuse, especially on college campuses, include:
Shifts in public perception of drugs
Changes in legislation that make penalties more or less severe
Availability of certain drugs, especially prescriptions
To be continued tomorrow
•Onwubiko is head, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria

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