- Fatal addiction to M.sukudai, cannabis, and codeine endanger minors in Borno
- As unemployment, trauma, drive youths’ dependence on drugs , experts foresee mental health crisis in Kano, Kaduna, Northeast
Madaran Sukudai tastes like wild love. It makes Suleiman Tanko dance to a beat no one can hear. From dawn through dusk, the 28-year-old boogies in ecstasy to the potion chemically prepared with formalin (formaldehyde gin). Although it is used to preserve corpses by mortuary attendants, it incites Tanko’s apathy to “big and small trouble;” like his joblessness and tragic loss of his drunkard son, Yusufu, in a gang fight.
Yusufu, 13, took to the bottle very early; like his father, he fell in love with M.sukudai, continually downing it to get high. In the end, he got stabbed to death in a turf war, along the rail track where local gangs converge to smoke and drink at the Galadima slum, in Maiduguri, Borno State.
Yusuf was allegedly high on the local alcohol substitute when he got in the fight but his father, Tanko, has no regrets. Even though he lost his son two years after the demise of his estranged wife and infant daughter in a bomb blast, Tanko isn’t one to wallow in “useless agony.”
“Boko Haram’s bomb killed my wife and daughter in Baga. Criminals killed my son here in Maiduguri. This land (Borno) has robbed me of too much. I’m sad, but they won’t come back. I can’t trouble myself about trifles,” he said, downing a trickle from his bottle of formalin.
“Wata ya seyray kankantchi’ii garra,” he continued, meaning: “Does the moon trouble itself about the punishment of an ant?”
“Nobody cares about my fate. I won’t worry and die before my time,” he said, in the tenor of a man whose native “land” has gnawed his joy to feed grotesque lusts.
Like Tanko, Abdullahi Usman is addicted to M.sukudai. Sometimes, he binges on cannabis and codeine. In a private encounter with The Nation on Lagos street in Maiduguri, he revealed: “I smoke weed and take these other things to think properly. When I am high, I see the future clearly. I get clever solutions to my problems.”
Besides their alleged benefits, hard drugs give Usman courage to attempt at noon, things he wouldn’t dare at night, while he is sober. Once, under the influence of M.sukudai, he tried to bed the pregnant wife of a commandant of a vigilance group, after he made a bet to woo and sleep with her in a local brothel.
Although he won the bet and earned himself a dinner of noodles and a 75cl bottle of M.sukudai, Usman got bound up and beaten to a pulp, by the lieutenants of the vigilance chief. That encounter left him with a limp and ugly scar across the temple.
At the backdrop of Tanko and Usman’s wild indulgences, youths in Borno engage in indiscriminate abuse of hard drugs.
“An inordinate lust for hard drugs makes them predisposed to violence and unlawful acts,” argued an intelligence officer of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Borno. According to him, illicit drug use is a factor in provoking violent conflict and crime in the state.
Few people will forget in a hurry the case of Musa Inuwa, who allegedly punched a 60-year-old man to death while he was high on drugs. Abdullahi Ibrahim, Borno NSCDC commandant, revealed that the suspect was arrested at Jidari Polo Bus Stop area of Maiduguri.
The victim, who suffered grievous bodily harm leading to his death, was said to have asked the suspect where he could locate a chemist to buy drugs.
“Unknown to him, Inuwa was intoxicated by illicit substance, and he told the old man that he was disturbing him. He subsequently punched the elderly man, who fell forward and hit his head on the concrete pavement,” said Ibrahim.
The victim was rushed to Umaru Shehu Specialist Hospital where he was pronounced dead as a result of massive brain trauma.
An excessive lust for hard drugs goads several youths in Borno and other parts of the country to the precipice of mental instability, according to health experts.
A recent study financed by the Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme (NSRP) and executed by International Alert, a consortium partner, revealed drug abuse at a worrisome magnitude in Borno, Kaduna, Kano, Plateau and Rivers states.
Marijuana, and prescription medications like Tramadol, cough syrup containing codeine, and home-brewed chemical cocktails, like M.sukudai, sold by street vendors fuel addiction across the states.
Homemade drinks like M.sukudai, which combine alcohol with dangerous chemicals are specific to Borno, Kaduna, Kano and Plateau, and cocaine abuse is cited more frequently by users in Rivers than in other states and described as the most dangerous.
Politicians as culprits
Drug users interviewed by The Nation cited unemployment and emotional trauma as reasons for taking to drugs.
“They think it will help manage their pain. But it doesn’t. It only aggravates it,” argued Stella Abari, a psychiatrist.
Idris Muhammed, a medical volunteer and civil servant, accused politicians of complicity, stating: “They recruit them as thugs and provide them with guns, machetes and narcotics at election time. They feed them drugs to make them high and unfeeling so that they can help perpetrate acts of vandalism and chaos during elections.”
But when the elections are over, “The politicians forget them, leaving them to their devices. The youth go back to being unemployed, and they become idle hands in the devil’s workshop. They loot, rape, engage in gang violence and use of drugs in pursuit of highs just for the fun of it”, argued Grace Ikumapayi, a social worker.
There is no gainsaying illicit drugs play a significant role in intoxicating youths to gang violence and terrorism. The Nation’s exclusive chats with captured Boko Haram insurgents revealed that members of the terrorist sect, especially suicide bombers, are plied with hard drugs to develop the courage to commit dastardly acts.
Governor Kashim Shettima had earlier claimed that members of the Boko Haram sect were acting under the influence of hard drugs, urging that there is need to cut off their drug supply. The governor asserted thus at the inauguration of a 10-man Anti-Drugs Control Committee to complement the efforts of the state government and NDLEA in the state.
How drug abuse exposes Borno girls and women to rape
Health officials, law enforcers, and social workers alleged that drug abuse in the state exposes women and girls to sexual assaults and domestic violence.
The Borno Command of the NSCDC disclosed that youths in Maiduguri hypnotise teenage girls with drugs and charms, to rape them.
Parents of rape victims in London Ciki, Jidari Polo and Gomari Coasting, in Maiduguri reported attacks on their kids aged between 13 and 14. The latter confessed that some boys abducted them in a tricycle and raped them afterwards, using drugs and charms, according to NSCDC commandant, Abdullahi.
Dangers of binging on M.sukudai, codeine and alcohol
Studies revealed that M.sukudai is no more than formalin (formaldehyde), a potent chemical substance used to preserve corpses in the mortuary. Vendors produce the drink by diluting formaldehyde with water. Once taken, there is a cold, burning sensation at the back of the tongue down the throat.
Sellers recommend it to smokers “to clear their chest,” while some take it “to relieve dental or chest pain.”
Formaldehyde is sourced from the chemical industries. It is found in cigarette smoke and burning of fuel or household waste. The pH of the samples ranges between 2.3 and 4.6 making it toxic. Toxicological studies reveal that M. sukudai kills gradually as its effect on the body takes time to manifest
Further findings showed rampant drug abuse by youths in Lagos, Kano, Plateau and Ogun State. For instance, Theophilus Adeoye, a 17-year-old user, died of excessive consumption of vodka and tramadol, an analgesic, in Lagos, few days after his admission into the university.
Augustine, a friend of the deceased, revealed that late Theophilus downed several cups of vodka laced with 2,000mg worth of tramadol and energy drink. “When they brought him in, he presented with acute respiratory distress syndrome. He had a blood concentration of 21.5 mg/L tramadol, with toxic levels of nicotine possibly from excessive smoking and other drugs. The patient slipped into tachycardia (irregular heartbeat) and deep coma. He had mixed respiratory and metabolic acidosis (Acidosis is an increased acidity of the blood and other body tissue, that is, an increased hydrogen ion concentration). Subsequently, he developed multiple organ dysfunctions and suffered severe seizures every 20 minutes. He suffered sudden cardiac arrest. He could not be resuscitated,” explained the physician, who attended to him.
Those who use opiates experience psychiatric disturbances, according to Isabella Kembi, a clinical psychiatrist. According to her, some patients are admitted with mental disorders, including psychosis and affective episodes following abuse of codeine-containing cough syrups and other illicit drugs. The withdrawals of codeine-containing cough syrups, she noted, often occur like heroin withdrawals but in a comparatively milder form.
Borno, Kano governments to the rescue
The Kano State government established a reformatory institute for users in Kiru and a committee to combat drug abuse. The committee includes the NDLEA, Society for Family Health, National Orientation Agency, Human Rights Network, Kano Youth Promotion Council and Youth Awareness and Drug Initiative, among others.
Thirty-seven percent of the population in Kano are drug abusers, the highest figures nationwide, according to NDLEA figures.
As Kano battles the menace, it also escalates in Borno, where the NDLEA confiscated more than 20 tonnes of illicit drugs from 87 suspects in two years.
The State Commissioner for Justice, Kaka Shehu, who also doubles as Chairman, Borno State Committee for the Control of Drug Abuse, stated that the state was considering declaring a state of emergency on illicit drug use.
He, however, said that officials are doing their best in the anti-drug abuse campaign, stressing that the government has initiated an aggressive anti-drug abuse campaign in the communities and IDP camps where “chronic addicts of illicit drugs” abound.
“We have had enough of Boko Haram and enough of our youths engaging in drug abuse,” he said.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that just under 9,000 arrests were made in 2014 for drug offences, with nearly 166,000 kilograms of drugs seized, the majority of which was marijuana. Of that number, 5,805 kilograms were seized in Borno, 6,375 in Kaduna, 7,522 in Kano, 1,210 in Plateau and 386 in Rivers.
Borno’s case may have worsened due to the trauma of insecurity, unemployment and loss imposed by the anti-terrorism war. Victims take illicit drugs and intoxicants to manage their pain, argued local health professionals and social workers.
By February last year, the Borno Command of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrested 32 persons for drug abuse and seized about 510 kilogrammes of various quantities of illicit drugs from the suspects in Galadima, Tashar Kano, Kasuwar Shanu and Bulumkutu.
Subsequently, the government banned sale and consumption of alcohol and hard drugs in Maiduguri metropolis.
A UNODC representative said that, in one study of individuals who were in treatment for drugs, 70 percent of opiate users listed Tramadol as their primary intoxicant.
Worried by the development, 38 federal legislators recently sponsored a motion: “The need to check the rising menace of pharmaceutical drug abuse among youths, especially in northern Nigeria.”
The measure was informed by the alarming trend of drug use in the country, especially in the north. The area records the highest consumer of hard drugs for several years. With 2,205 cases in 2015 alone, the region maintains the lead in the number of drug-related arrests in recent times, according to NDLEA records.
Rohypnol: a tool for date-rape
While addressing journalists in Lagos ahead of its 36th Annual National Conference of the ACPN tagged ‘Jos City 2017′, the National Chairman of the ACPN, Dr. Albert Kelong, admitted that the prevalence of drug abuse among Nigerian youths was alarming.
He said: “If you go to illegal drug premises, you will find these drugs and operators of the premises dispense the medications without prescriptions and without regard to patients’ health.
“We want to position ourselves well to ensure that people do not sometimes bring fake prescriptions to get these medicines and abuse them.”
The murder of Cynthia Osokogwu by a Facebook acquaintance revealed how Flunitrazepam, a sleep enhancer, is abused. The pill otherwise known as Rohypnol was used to sedate Osokogu before she was raped and strangled. It was acquired without prescription from a registered pharmacy in Festac, Lagos.
Drugs as child-candy and libido enhancer
The menace assumes critical dimension, as vulnerable segments comprising women and children take to drugs. their libido and escape marital and emotional trauma,” explained Fatima Yahaya, a marriage counsellor and social psychologist.
But why are kids taking to hard drugs? Recently, the police in Lagos State arrested Ibrahim Sheu, 40, and his son, Faruk Ibrahim, 23, for allegedly selling Tramadol and other hard drugs to primary and secondary school pupils in the state.
Officials of the Office of Education and Quality Assurance alerted the police who arrested them and recovered 72 pieces of Tramadol from them.
“The suspects confessed to have been selling drugs to the children. I want to advise parents to be extra-vigilant and keep a constant watch on their children and their friends. Parents should do surprise checks on their children and often look out for change in behaviour,” said Lagos Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal.
“There is need to educate the public, minors in partic ular, on the risk of using illicit drugs. Teenagers across the country take alcohol and coke with Tramadol and cough syrup containing codeine. They take it while smoking cannabis.
“They get high afterwards and lose all inhibitions, making them agreeable to random acts of violence. Too many of them have killed and are dying in the process,” said Taiye Ajekitan, a psychiatrist.
Ajekitan called for urgent government intervention but as stakeholders go to the drawing board, let them not forget kids in obscure neighbourhood slums and roadside pubs dying to get high in faraway Maiduguri.
He said: “Intervention efforts should exceed arresting them and shuttling them off to a reformatory for withdrawal therapy. Many of them step out of the facilities into their troubled world and dysfunctional families.”
Thirteen-year-old Yusufu, for instance, hadn’t the greatest role model in his father, Tanko. Taking after him, he became a full-fledged drunkard, continually binging on M.sukudai, a gin crudely made from formaldehyde, a corpse preservative.
Yusufu was stabbed to death in the drunken state. The 13-year-old incites the irony of a contrived metaphor: alive, he lived dangerously, binging on the chemical used to preserve dead bodies by mortuary attendants. In death, Yusufu’s innards were probably preserved by the same chemical.