…want civil servants, politicians to be given a random drug test
Nigerians have expressed concerns over the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency’s (NDLEA) proposal to introduce hard drug testing for students in tertiary institutions.
Though the agency said the initiative was focused on public health rather than criminalisation, many Nigerians who spoke to BusinessDay said they were uncomfortable with the anti-drug agency’s proposal.
Isaiah Ogundele, an educationist, said hard drug tests in tertiary institutions should be left to the school authorities and not NDLEA.
According to Ogundele, “Allowing NDLEA to do that will hurt the innocent students that don’t have an idea of what hard drug is.
“It will also leave our society in a situation worse than what the Western worlds are facing now because it will sell this into the subconscious of some innocent students.”
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He urged the government and its agencies to channel their energies towards the borders where illicit drugs are being smuggled into the country.
“In my opinion, the government should stop chasing the shadows because the law guiding drug abuse is too flexible, for instance, that of hemp smokers.
“Police cannot arrest the offenders on the spot because the arrest will depend on the quantity found on him or her. Finally, a poor man cannot thrive in the drug business. The people involved cannot succeed if some law enforcement agents do not support them,” he said.
He said some private universities were already carrying out such tests on their students.
“My son did it in the Redeemers’ University of Nigeria (RUN) as part of the screening exercise every season,” he noted.
Adams Bello, a staff at Babcock University does not see any reason for NDLEA to come up with such a proposal, bearing in mind that average Nigerian students do not trust the Nigerian government or its agencies.
“They said it’s for a survey, not necessarily for criminalisation, and just for statistical data; I think maybe just five percent of the students will volunteer, and the remaining 95 percent will not.
“Why would a school force people to do volunteer tests, and if at the end of the day the NDLEA gets their statistics, even if it’s 1000 students that test positive, it will portray such an institution in a bad light,” he said.
Bello maintained that the NDLEA has no business conducting hard drug tests on students because according to him, Babcock University already conducts tests on its students.
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“The university conducts tests on students periodically; when we resume for a semester and during the semester at our in-house hospital, Babcock Teaching Hospital,” he said.
Similarly, Ephraim Nwokporo, a research and teaching assistant at Lagos Business School, said Nigerians must know that the end does not always justify the means.
“NDLEA is known for hard drug push-prevention, given that the agency has branded itself as the government’s organisation that focuses on curbing drug use; how do we make a shift that the test won’t be used for criminalisation?
“I would they work with other agencies in approaching the exercise with the student, given the people’s perception of the agency. I think working in collaboration with another agency would be better,” he said.
Besides, Nwokporo pointed out that conducting such a test on students below 18 years would require parental consent which to him would be a clog to achieving such a goal.
However, Friday Erhabor, the director of media and strategies at Marklenez Limited, welcomed the idea, considering the way hard drug-related issues have penetrated Nigerian society in recent times.
“I think they can do it randomly unannounced just like they do it to footballers. However, it should go beyond students. Top civil servants and political officeholders should be included in the random drug test,” he said.
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According to Femi Babafemi, the NDLEA spokesman, students who test positive for hard drugs should be given the necessary support to thrive on school grounds.
“We’re treating this as a public health issue, not a crime, let me quickly put that in perspective.
“Whoever tests positive for drug use in that situation, we collaborate with them so that the people who test positive are not punished or expelled from the school, they are taken for treatment to win off these substances and also to get them reintegrated into their classes, back to the academic pursuit”, Babafemi said.
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