I could have become a drug addict — Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has recounted how he attempted to embrace smoking as a habit as a young man, saying he could’ve become a drug addict if he had not stopped. 

According to him, he was later confronted with severe coughing which made him run away from it.

He said, “If I had persisted, I could have become addicted. Once you get involved, it is difficult to get out,” Obasanjo told the gathering of youths, students, mental health specialists and policymakers. There’s nothing drug can do for you except destruction.”

Obasanjo said this in his remarks at the second edition of ‘Fly Above The High’, an anti-drug campaign conference organised by the Recovery Advocacy Network, in Abeokuta.

The former President, who disclosed that West Africa has become a centre of hard drug consumption, and no longer a transit point, lamented the rate at which Nigerian youths engaged in the usage of hard drugs, advising them to abstain from it in order not to jeopardize their future.

He explained that the use and abuse of psychoactive drugs would rather destroy their future than add value to life.

The former president who recalled his role as the Chairman of the West African Drug Commission under the Kofi Annan Foundation stated that members of the Commission and himself went round the West African countries with the belief that the region was free from drugs, but discovered that the region is not just a transit point for drugs but a centre of consumption.

Obasanjo, therefore, called for restraint among the youths, saying “There is nothing drug can do for you except destruction.”

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“But to our dismay, displeasure, and pain, at the end of the exercise, we found out that West Africa has equally been a centre for drug consumption in a very bad way. That was more than 10 years ago, so the situation has since gone worse. And whatever applies to West Africa applies to all other parts of Africa,” Obasanjo said.

The Managing Director of Serenity Royale Hospital Dr. Kunle Adesina, on the sidelines of the programme, said it has become necessary to address the issue of abuse of drugs with focus on primordial and primary prevention levels by educating young people about the dangers of substance use before they start.

He revealed that about 14.3 million Nigerians, representing 14.3% of the population, have used a substance within the last six months adding that one in five drug users is female.

Adesina said, “Addiction treatment is best approached through prevention. We must focus on primordial and primary prevention levels to educate young people about the dangers of substance use before they start.”

He called for strong legislation to reduce the availability of drugs, noting that the widespread accessibility of substances fuels the growing crisis. 

A mental health specialist, Dr. Samuel Abah,  said “From our experience, we discovered that even those that are meant to control the substance are the ones involved.

“We must stand our ground that this thing is not helpful, it’s destructive. It’s not just a pleasure but a destructive pleasure.”

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