The former Chief Executive, National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Professor Usman Yusuf, has called on the Federal Government to introduce stiffer penalties against drug dealers in the country.
He made the call in a keynote address presented at a one-day symposium on drug abuse and moral decadence in society.
The event was organised in Kano by the Initiative for Community Action Against Drug Abuse.
Prof. Yusuf expressed worry that bandits, including members of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, Boko Haram and other criminals carry out their operations under the influence of drugs.
He said, “Sheikh Gumi and I went into the deep forest to meet with the bandits in states across the north.
“We saw the bandits, who were mainly kids between the ages of 10 and 13, carrying big guns, smoking marijuana and pushing Pentax.
“My message is nobody will solve the problem for us. The problem is ours. We have to stand up and solve it ourselves.
“Pentax, Boska, Sudrex, codeine and tramadol are not manufactured here. We know where they were brought from. We must cut off the supply chain.
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“And anybody in any community, whether a settler or an indigene, that is found selling any of these drugs should face the full wrath of the law.
“We must be serious about this. It is destroying our society and our children. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency is doing its best but cannot do it alone.”
Prof. Yusuf, therefore, called on community leaders, traditional rulers and other major stakeholders to all get involved, adding, “Parents too must keep their eye on their wards over the kind of peer groups they keep.”
Also, the former President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Ahmed Yakasai, said the group was battling with fake and hard drugs in Sabon Gari, Kano, Ariaria in Aba, Onitsha in Anambra and Idumota, a Lagos Market.
He underscored the need for government to open a Central Wholesale Centre to checkmate the phenomenon.
The former PSN president, however, regretted that “some disgruntled elements” were resisting the plan and relocation of the drug dealers to the CWC in Kano.
He called on students and other participants at the symposium to say no to drug abuse, saying that the habit does no good to them rather, it will destroy their future.
Earlier, the Vice Chancellor, Yusuf Maitama Sule University, Prof. Mukhtar Kurawa, said that the institution had zero tolerance for drug abuse.
According to him, the university has a tradition of subjecting its new entrants to a series of orientation programmes on the dangers of drug abuse.
(NAN)
