Health
Children at the centre of Nigeria’s worsening drug crisis
By Daniel Ayantoye
The arrest of two elderly men, 84-year-old pensioner, Godfrey Orji, and 75-year-old patent medicine dealer, Godwin Obiora, by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency for allegedly supplying illicit drugs to secondary school students in Umuahia, Abia State, has exposed a disturbing dimension of Nigeria’s growing drug crisis: one in which children are allegedly being targeted within the very environments meant to protect them.
According to the agency, Orji was arrested in June 2026 at Saint Silas Secondary School, Old Umuahia. During the operation, NDLEA operatives also recovered 4.64kg of opioids, including tramadol and diazepam, from Obiora’s patent medicine shop.
Investigators said one of the students, a 15-year-old SS2 pupil, confessed that Orji had been supplying him with drugs, which he not only consumed but also sold to fellow students.
The teenagers were subsequently placed on counselling and rehabilitation, while the two suspects were to face prosecution.
The case is alarming not merely because of the advanced ages of the alleged suppliers, but because a secondary school, ordinarily a safe space for children, allegedly became a distribution point for illicit drugs.
More importantly, the Umuahia arrests suggest the incident may be more than an isolated case, raising concerns about the growing vulnerability of children to increasingly sophisticated drug networks.
Changing drug market
The Nigerian drug market is changing. While cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other traditional illicit drugs remain major concerns, pharmaceutical opioids, synthetic cannabinoids and other new psychoactive substances are complicating the picture.
The NDLEA’s operation in Abia came at a time when the agency also intercepted ADB-Chminaca, a synthetic cannabinoid classified as a dangerous new psychoactive substance, in a courier shipment from China to Lagos. The consignment weighed 9.5kg.
During the same period, NDLEA operatives recovered 300g of Loud, a potent strain of cannabis, concealed in ladies’ handbags.
Young people can encounter substances in tablets, syrups, plant material, synthetic compounds and products whose appearance may not immediately suggest the presence of an illicit drug.
That makes children particularly vulnerable.
The scale of the crisis
The scale of Nigeria’s drug problem is already substantial. The National Drug Use Survey (2018) estimated that 14.4 per cent of Nigerians aged 15 to 64, about 14.3 million people, had used at least one psychoactive substance, excluding alcohol and tobacco, for non-medical purposes in the previous year.
The survey also found substantial non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, including tramadol and codeine-containing preparations.
A 2026 epidemiological study involving 9,437 adolescents aged 11 to 17 from 47 public secondary schools across Lagos State examined substance use disorders among Nigerian adolescents, providing important recent evidence on the scale and risk factors associated with adolescent substance use.
A separate study of 800 secondary school students in Lagos, published in the South African Journal of Psychiatry, found that 13.6 per cent reported lifetime substance use, while 6.9 per cent reported current use.
Among the 55 current users, tramadol was the most commonly reported substance, accounting for 52.7 per cent, followed by marijuana at 36.4 per cent and shisha at 29.1 per cent.
These figures suggest that Nigeria’s adolescent drug problem cannot be dismissed as an anecdotal consequence of a few troublesome teenagers. It is a public health and child protection issue.
When medicine becomes a drug
Perhaps one of the most complicated aspects of the drug crisis is the role of pharmaceutical medicines.
For years, health authorities, including NAFDAC, have raised concerns about the abuse of medicines such as tramadol and codeine, identifying them as among the most commonly abused prescription drugs and describing the trend as an emerging public health problem.
The agency has also highlighted the dangers associated with the abuse of psychoactive medicines.
The challenge is particularly complex because medicines do not carry the same psychological stigma as substances commonly described as “hard drugs.” As a result, a teenager may regard a tablet obtained from a friend, a patent medicine shop or another source as ordinary medicine rather than a potentially addictive psychoactive substance.
This is one reason why NAFDAC’s regulatory role is so critical.
The agency’s responsibilities include regulating medicines and removing substandard, falsified and unregistered products from circulation.
NAFDAC has also undertaken drug abuse prevention initiatives involving young people, including the NAFDAC Youths Against Drug Abuse Programme and its Consumer Safety Club, which encourages school-based participation in medicine safety and anti-drug abuse campaigns.
Its earlier enforcement actions also included the destruction of banned and unregistered tramadol and codeine products.
But regulation at the manufacturing and distribution level cannot, on its own, solve a problem that is also driven by demand, peer pressure, family circumstances and criminal distribution networks.
The NDLEA itself has acknowledged that drug abuse is not restricted to one social class, location or age group.
In August 2025, NDLEA Chairman, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Marwa (retd.), called for a collective response involving families, religious institutions, traditional rulers, schools and community leaders.
He said the agency had intensified drug supply reduction operations while simultaneously expanding its demand reduction programmes.
According to figures he provided in August 2025, the NDLEA had arrested 67,345 traffickers in the preceding 54 months, including 95 alleged barons, while 12,415 offenders were serving jail terms.
During the same period, the agency said it had seized more than 11.2 million kilogrammes of assorted illicit drugs and destroyed 1,572 hectares of cannabis farms.
Marwa also said the NDLEA had conducted 11,584 sensitisation lectures and treated and rehabilitated 27,187 drug users through its rehabilitation facilities and psychosocial support services.
The NDLEA is increasingly combining supply reduction with demand reduction, school sensitisation, counselling, treatment and rehabilitation.
But the question remains: Is the response keeping pace with the changing market?
Experts warn
Experts, in separate interviews with Sunday PUNCH, expressed concern that the changing nature of Nigeria’s drug market is making children increasingly vulnerable, particularly as psychoactive substances are allegedly being concealed in products that do not immediately appear to be drugs.
Professor of Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgery at Obafemi Awolowo University, Oladiran Adegbehingbe, said the problem goes beyond the traditional image of children encountering drugs on the streets.
He raised concerns about psychoactive substances allegedly being concealed in sweets, cakes, peppermints and some beverages, and distributed at social gatherings such as birthday parties, end-of-year celebrations and sporting events.
“There are cases in existence where some of these drugs are put into candies, cakes, all kinds of peppermints. Even some of the teas are laced with drugs that you don’t know,” the don said.
According to him, the alleged exposure cuts across age groups, from kindergarten and primary school pupils to secondary school and university students.
He also expressed concern about medicines that may be expired, improperly relabelled or sold cheaply, particularly in areas where monitoring is difficult.
Adegbehingbe said the disguise of some substances makes the problem particularly difficult for parents to detect, noting that substances such as marijuana, cocaine, codeine and tramadol could allegedly be presented in products such as cookies.
He warned that repeated exposure could affect children’s behaviour, personality and overall health.
The don also acknowledged the enormous challenge facing enforcement agencies in monitoring the country’s sprawling drug market.
“The Nigerian market is so wide. Many of these drugs are not able to be effectively monitored. The NDLEA is doing its best, but the population is huge,” he added.
His observations highlight the limitations facing enforcement agencies in a country with a vast population and extensive formal and informal distribution networks.
While the NDLEA is responsible for disrupting the supply of illicit drugs, NAFDAC has a crucial role in regulating medicines and preventing unsafe, counterfeit and unregistered pharmaceutical products from entering circulation.
On her part, Professor of Clinical, Counselling and Rehabilitation Psychology at Lagos State University, Deborah Adewuyi, approached the issue from the perspective of family environment, child development and parental substance use.
She described what she called “third-generation substance abuse,” referring to children born into families where substance dependence has persisted across generations.
“There is third-generation substance abuse. This is a generation where a drug addict marries another addict,” Adewuyi said.
She also identified behaviours such as aggression, hyperactivity, withdrawal, poor concentration and conduct problems as issues that should receive closer attention when there is a history of substance exposure.
The don stated that parental supervision remains critical because children spend significant periods outside the home and can be influenced by peers, caregivers and other children in daycare and school environments.
She noted that prevention cannot begin only after a child has been caught using drugs.
For her, parents, teachers and caregivers need to recognise warning signs early, while children exposed to substances require medical and psychological assessment rather than punishment alone.
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