The Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Brig. General Mohamed Buba Marwa (Retd) has praised the House of Representatives for not welcoming a bill to legalise cultivation, sale and use of cannabis in Nigeria.
The Informant247 recalls that the members and leaders of the Green Chamber of the National Assembly rejected the bill under discussion in the legislative house on Thursday March 23.
Reacting, the NDLEA chief on Friday March 24, commended the decision of lower Chamber, saying it would energise the agency to keep up the war against abuse and trafficking of drugs in the country.
He referenced 2018 drug survey figure, which revealed that 10.6m Nigerians were abusing cannabis.
“Insecurity is today, a full-blown malady with many manifestations such as insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, murder, robbery, reprisal killing, name it. Yet there has never been a government that is more committed to ending this spate of insecurity than the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“The President has matched political will with resources, but the scope and frequency of these acts of destabilisation and the audacity displayed by the perpetrators call for a second, critical look at the malaise.
“The persistence of the problem has forced on us the necessity to start to look at likely extraneous factors that might be sustaining the resistance from the criminal elements and in doing so, try to connect the dots.
“The permutations will lead to a list of probable causes, which will not exclude the use and abuse of illicit substances. In the final analysis, drug abuse is indeed one of the factors fueling insecurity. As such, Nigeria cannot afford to permit the cultivation, sale and use of the most abused illicit drug under whatever guise.
“This is why the decision by the honorable members of the House of Representatives to reject the reintroduction of the cannabis bill is a welcome and cheering news to us in the NDLEA and the Nigerian public especially parents who daily and silently contend with the pains of seeing millions of their kids and wards go down under the devastating effects of cannabis abuse.”