The Senate has urged President Bola Tinubu’s government to declare a state of emergency on illicit drug abuse in the country.

This followed the adoption of a motion on “Urgent need to address the menace of drug abuse in Nigeria” at plenary on Tuesday by Senator Babangida Hussain (APC -Jigawa).

Presenting the motion, Mr Babangida said Nigeria was faced with rising drug abuse cases, which had reached an unprecedented level.

He said Nigeria had transformed from a mere transit country in the 1990s into a country filled with drug addiction and traffickers all over its land space.

“A population of between 30 million and 35 million spends approximately 15,000 and 30,000 dollars annually on psychotropic drugs and alcoholic beverages in Nigeria, ” he said.

He said the statistics by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the European Union on drug use in Nigeria stated that about 14.3 million Nigerians between the ages of 15 and 64 were drug users.

“The report stated that 10.6 million addicts were cannabis users, 4.6 addicts used pharmaceutical opioids, and 238,0000 abusers used amphetamines,” he said.

He said the prevalence of drug abuse per geo-political zone in 2017 showed that the North-West accounted for 12 per cent, the North-East 13.6 per cent, North- Central 10.0 per cent, South-West 22.4 per cent South-South 16.6 per cent and the South-East 13.8 per cent.

Mr Babaginda said the main drugs abused in Nigeria were mood-altering or psychoactive drugs, performance-enhancing drugs, dependency drugs and prescription drugs.

He said the side effects included addiction, trauma, and mental illness and oftentimes resulted in ill health, violence and involvement in criminal activities.

He expressed worry that the war against drug abuse by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency was not yielding the required result.

Mr Babaginda said there was a need to include special drug education in the schools’ curriculum.

Contributing, Senator Mohammed Monguno (APC-Borno) said drug abuse was affecting the productivity of youths as it had adverse economic effects and distorted cultural values.

(NAN)