The rate at which women are involved in the illicit trade of drug trafficking is alarming and should be a subject of concern to the Nigerian public.
In the past three months, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) announced the arrest of an unprecedented number of female suspects. One of them was the alleged female head of a drug syndicate whose name was given as Faith Ebele Nwankwo, who was arrested in her residence in Lagos shortly after she returned from a warehouse at Amuwo-Odofin where she loaded eight cartons of tramadol into an unmarked white Honda Pilot SUV.
Similarly, a Lekki, Lagos, female lawyer, Ebikpolade Helen, alleged to have specialised in the production and distribution of skuchies, a New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) that is a mixture of hemp, opioids and black currant, was arrested in a follow-up operation in Awka, Anambra State, following an earlier seizure of 5kg of hemp and 12 bottles of skuchies in her apartment in Lekki.
In the first week of October, there was a mugshot of a 45-year-old woman identified as Bilkisu Mohammed Bello who was arrested at the Kano airport on her way to Saudi Arabia with cocaine and methamphetamine. A week earlier, two women were arrested with bags of hemp.
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These women are among a long list of women arrested by NDLEA in the past three months.
What is appalling about their situation is that they conducted their illicit businesses in their homes where they lived with their children.
This should be of concern to Nigerians. And we should start pondering: what kind of children are these women raising? Again, this raft of arrests of female traffickers should also turn our attention to the possibility that not all teenagers picked drug abuse or drug trafficking habits from friends and peers. Some of them actually “inherited” the habit from their families. If a mother or father sells hemp or any other illicit drug for a living, what is the possibility that the child will deviate from the “family” business? What is the possibility that the child will not end up as a user?
This is not about women alone, but about parents in general. It is disheartening to see fathers and grandfathers dealing in drugs, like in the case of Boniface Ogwurlobi (62) and Chimezie Onyenjuru who were arrested in Uli town in Ihiala LGA of Anambra State with 49kg of hemp, 127g of methamphetamine and 15g of cocaine.
Do we seriously expect their offspring not to be interested in the livelihood of their parents?
In our collective drive – spearheaded by NDLEA – to rid our country of the menace of dangerous drugs, we need to pay attention to children from homes where parents are active producers and traffickers.
As a society, the onus is on us to protect the rights of the child, and this includes looking out for their wellbeing and ensuring that they grow up in a wholesome environment where they will not be introduced to abnormal behaviour by their families.
The NDLEA should expand its WADA advocacy campaign to target community leaders, religious leaders, and teachers to further amplify the message to parents to think about the future of their offspring before venturing into the trade and trafficking of illicit substances.
Nanzem Nkup wrote from Rikkos, Jos, Plateau State.