Adamu Ahmad Ibrahim
When I was in primary school, secondary school I can remember how different CSO’s reached out to us, advising and guiding, telling us to avoid involving ourselves into the habits of substance use, a lifestyle that has consumed and later destroyed the life of most of our friends.
That was about 26 years ago since I heard the first summon on drug Abuse.
As at that time, none of my friends were engaged in such lifestyle, but as at now I lost count on the numbers of my friends that lost their lives, family and friends, lost their purpose and future because of the dangerous lifestyle of drugs and other substance abuse.
So I wonder, are we fighting a war that we cannot win or are we using the wrong strategy in the fight against drug abuse?
I later realised that, we are only fighting the act not the cause, the motives or the drives. We only give example of drug Abuse effects on young people who are from low level income families. Whenever an unfortunate event occurs, we tend to connect it with drug abuse, like the recent killings of seven families by one young umar from dorayi, area of Kano state, whom after burning and brutally murdered another family.
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Education is one key factor that we need to improve, and the level of drug Abuse and it’s effects will go low.
We have been doing awareness and other means of strategy to fight drug abuse, but we are making less efforts to improve our educational system.
Leadership skills, As a community we need to invest more onto our young one’s whom have shown a character of transformational leadership, we have to show our youths that it’s good to be good, there has to be a reward for being good citizen, community change champion and a peace maker.
I believe, if we can improve the two aforementioned factors, we stand a chance at winning the battle.
I am Adamu Ahmad Ibrahim
Executive Director
Arewa Health Promotion Initiative