A democracy inclined Non-Governmental Organization-Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has urged the National Drugs Laws Enforcement Agency [NDLEA] to increase the intensity and improve on its strategies against drugs trafficking and all traces of drug abuses even as it has canvassed further and better legislation by the National Assembly to provide for stiffer penalties for Drug barons including a life sentence to serve as deterrent.
“The current legal regime against hard drugs trafficking is too lenient and unsustainable for a country that has come under unprecedented violence from a range of freelance armed hoodlums prodded on by their habit of drug addiction”, HURIWA, argued.
HURIWA has also called on the anti-hard drugs agency to embark on intensive enlightenment campaigns and to commence he aggressive rehabilitation of drug addicts especially the younger populations whose numbers are increasing in leaps and bounds. The Rights group believes that because the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency has done practically nothing to change the orientations of thousands of young drug addicts that social and violent crimes have skyrocketed in recent times across the country.
The rights group wants the governors of the 36 states and the minister of the federal capital territory to jointly partner with the national anti-hard drugs body to stamp out hard drug addiction that has become a hydra headed monster tearing our younger populations apart and pushing them into organized violent crime and social misdemeanor. The group said that the lips service paid to the anti-hard drugs campaign by the political administrators across the country is similar to playing with a dangerous fire that is capable of consuming the nation.
In a statement jointly endorsed by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Director of Media Miss. Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA also tasked the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency [NDLEA] to partner with sister governmental and credible Non-Governmental organizations to wage unrelenting enlightenment crusade in schools across the country on the hazards of drug addiction and also create a national crime data bank of all the convicted drug barons and the traffickers as an effective mechanism for naming and shaming these drug barons and keep innocent but vulnerable members of the public from being recruited for the dastardly criminal acts of drug trafficking.
Lamenting that several years after the creation of the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency the institution is yet to create the significant national impact by way of making the diverse communities and groups across the country to own the process of waging war against hard drugs and actively partner in the fight against drug trafficking and addiction, the Rights group wants the federal government and by extension the National Assembly to significantly increase the funding capacity of the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency and compel it to financially and technically empower community and civil society leaders and stakeholders in the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory to kick start a national anti-hard drugs crusade.
Besides, the group said the NDLEA has not come clean regarding the transparent burning of hard drugs confiscated from arrested hard drugs traffickers just as the Rights group wants the National Assembly to mandate the NDLEA to ensure that the public burning of the confiscated hard drugs are observed by tested and trusted statesmen and women including leaders of the civil society, the media and community based organizations.