Alhaji Junaidu Yusuf, Commandant, Abia Command of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), has urged Abia residents to volunteer information on Methamphetamine laboratories in the state to curtail its abuse.
Yusuf made the call in his office in Aba on Friday during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
He said that the NDLEA was aware of the existence of the dangerous drug laboratories in Abia but required the assistance of residents to track and shut them down.
“Methamphetamine labs are within here but the only thing is that information is lacking on them.
“If we can trace the labs here, the preponderance of the drug whose impact is very dangerous and increasing will reduce”, he said.
Yusuf also lamented the lack of mobility hindering their effectiveness as a result of the agency’s old rickety vehicles.
According to him, Abia can only be better covered by the NDLEA if they have vehicles that can aid mobility to drug hotspots in the state.
“We are handicapped now. The vehicles we have are old, rickety and cannot go far.
“We can hardly go far from Aba because our vehicles are in bad shape and they move and stop at some points,” he said.
He said that the measure of how much a drug is abused by people can be seen based on the rate of arrests of abusers and demands for rehabilitation at the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Contro (NAFDAC) centre.
“Day by day, parents are bringing their children and wards who have issues of drug to our rehabilitation facility.
“So our assessment of the proliferation of drugs here is based on the number of arrests and demand for rehabilitation and those are high here”, he said.
He said that the agency had made some arrests and recovered about three pistols in the past few weeks.
He said that the rate of usage of this Methamphetamine and others is swelling by the day and so needs everyone’s efforts to curb.
