NDLEA convicts 69 drug offenders in Adamawa

The Adamawa State Command of the Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) says it prosecuted 69 drug offenders in 2021.

The state commander of the agency, Mosoti Mathias, who disclosed this Monday in Yola, said 82 cases are pending in courts.

The commander, who spoke while on a courtesy call to the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) at the NUJ Press Centre in Yola on Monday morning, disclosed that two of the pending cases were those of a driver and his motor boy caught conveying cannabis sativa in a motorised concrete mixer.

He said his men, relying on intelligence last month, intercepted the concrete mixer conveying 2,196 kgs of cannabis to the commercial town of Mubi, a major town around the Nigeria-Cameroon border 194 kilometres north of the Adamawa State capital, Yola

He said the vehicle was intercepted just after the Jimeta bridge in Yola as it was conveying the substance to Mubi.

“The vehicle and the prohibited items were seized while the driver and motor boy are currently in detention awaiting prosecution,” the NDLEA commander said.

He said the seizure of the cannabis sativa was a breakthrough because it would have worsened drug-related problems in Mubi and its environs.

“Our youths are demented and their future distorted because of influence of illicit drugs,” the NDLEA state commander lamented, adding that drug use compounds insurgency, banditry and other forms of anti-social acts.

He called for a concerted fight against drug use because of its negative effects on users and appealed particularly to journalists to use their positions to ease the fight.

Responding to the remark of the NDLEA commander, Chairman of the Adamawa State Council of the NUJ, Ishaku Dedan, said journalists would do their part in the fight against illicit drugs but that parents and religious bodies equally have huge roles in remoulding youths away from drugs.