●Agency seizes 804-kg illicit drugs, secures 38 convictions
The Akwa Ibom State Commander of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Obot Bassey, has expressed worry over what she adjudges as uncomfortably rising cases of abuse of unlawful substances and hard drugs in Akwa Ibom.
The anti-drug top brass said this during the 2025 Feast of Barracuda gathering of the National Association of Seadogs (NAS), a.k.a. Pyrates Confraternity, Atlantic Shores Deck, in Eket, Monday, 14 July.
Speaking on the theme, High Cost of Getting High: Unmasking the Real Price of Drug Abuse, Bassey, who spoke through Mr Ojukwu Obidi, the officer in charge of Eket Area Command of the agency, stated that the rate of drug abuse is very high, in Akwa Ibom State.
According to Leadership (Newspaper), Bassey explained that drug abuse was alarming in the state because its people “see it as nothing. They see it as a way of promoting the economy and sustaining themselves.
She lamented that young adults in the state were actively taking Indian hemp, warning that the mixture of marijuana and alcohol contributed largely to cases of mental health challenges.
If you go to social gatherings in Akwa Ibom, hardly will you not see young adults taking combine, and you know that their genetic make-ups are different, and this leads many of them to mental health challenges, she said.
Bassey disclosed that, this year alone, her command has so far seized over 804 kg of hard drugs and secured 38 convictions.
This year alone, we have arrested 312 suspects in Akwa Ibom. If you look at the people we have arrested already, the cost to their families and communities is very high.
If you look at our society today, you will find out that violent crimes are increasing like kidnapping, rape, armed robbery due to drug abuse, she submitted.
Beyond arrests and convictions, she added, the agency has been carrying out sensitisation programmes every week to disabuse the minds of people on drug abuse in the state.
The President of NAS, Capn Idongesit Ifon, assured of the commitment of his association to fighting drug abuse and warned that any member caught involved in drug abuse would be expelled.
My members do not get involved in drugs. Anyone that is caught would be expelled from the association, Ifon, assured.
He noted that the country and communities were witnessing the corrosive effects of drug abuse from shattered lives and broken families to rising crimes, poor mental health and weakened institutions.
Ifon pointed out that drug indulgence was a growing menace that demanded collective awareness and deliberate, strategic intervention.