A MUST READ…
Continuation (2)…
At the start of our investigation, it was thought that the problem was typical of the North west, but investigations showed that the drug problem could be even worse among women ion the North east, which has been ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency.
In Yola, capital of Adamawa State, some 764 kilometres from Kaduna, Sarah Haruna, a hairdresser does not complete her day without taking codeine.
Sarah Haruna…
According to Sarah, she was introduced to drug by the daughter of a former Vice President of Nigeria who used to invite her home. She became a courier for her, sometimes been sent to buy cartons of codeine syrup and hiding them under her bed and inside her wardrobes…Sarah got to make other friends, all children of well – known people in the state, who are equally codeine addicts. She also got to know their boyfriends, most of who she said smoke cannabis and sniff cocaine…
She is still single at 32 and always hangs out with friends at Legon Villa or any of the hotels along Barracks Road in Yola….
… While drug abuse, especially cannabis, has been a long time problem among male youths in the North, codeine cough syrup is the emerging cancer ravaging women and girls in the North from Kaduna to Borno and Yobe to Narasarawa. Codeine syrup has become the favourite drug of abuse by all classes of girls and women in the north, but most especially the daughters and wives of the wealthy…
The smallest bottle of codeine syrup costs up to N600, while some cost as high as N1,000. Some of the girls admit they could take up to eight bottles in a day.
Since many of the girls and women, including housewives, are neither career nor business women, the habit is sustained by a legion of “boyfriends” who buy for them….
To be cont…
