The
havoc caused by the habit of consistence drug abuse amongst women in
northern Nigeria has been revealed in this explosive report.
Illustrative photo
The reporter had to be introduced as an NGO worker helping children
and women, to get her to agree to a meeting. Even then, she extracted a
promise that she would be given “something” before she settled down for
a chat.
She looked cheerful but shy and carried her lean frame gingerly as
if afraid she might fall down any minute. Her cheeks were slightly
sunken, making her cheekbones prominent. She clutched a fairly weathered
handbag. Her open neck Ankara blouse revealed sharp shoulder blades, a
sign that she was not feeding well.
“Actually I take drugs. In fact I’m addicted to drugs,” she said without much prodding. “I just took some before leaving the house now. I cannot eat food nor do anything without taking the drugs.”
Fatima Hassan, a 2010 graduate of the Kaduna Polytechnic, who still
lives with her mother, was introduced to drugs when she went for her
National Youth Service Corp in Minna, Niger State, when she started
dating the son of a wealthy man.
“My boyfriend had many friends and all of them were taking
drugs like cocaine, wee-wee, syrup and some tablets, and he made me to
join them.”
She joined the girls in taking bottles of cough mixtures with
codeine contents. The ones without codeine do not excite the brain, so
they are not useful.
The boys would take hard drugs like cocaine, heroin or wee-wee and
get syrup for the girls. There are varieties of them, including CSP,
Stopcof, C&C, Cofflin, Totalin, Ezolyn, and the prices ranges from
N250 per bottle to N1000 per bottle.
After her NYSC, Fatima came back to Kaduna and started looking for
where to get the codeine syrup. Soon, she met other girls who have
become addicted like her, and began buying for herself.
According to her, in the last five years, she has met more than 200 girls and women who take codeine in Kaduna.
She said there are ‘countless’ numbers of women, including married
and ordinarily responsible women, in Kaduna who are codeine addicts.
Fatima grew to taking up to eight bottles of codeine in a day and
it still will not get her ‘high’ enough. Then she learnt how to boost
the syrup with prescription tablets like Tramadol, Rohypnol and D5.
Whenever she takes the combination, which has been daily since her
NYSC ended six years ago, it gives her an uncommon feeling, she said.
“Wow, I feel cool, I feel like Don Jazzy; I feel like the President and I
feel like I own the world. I feel like there is nobody above me,” she
told the reporter as her face brightened with a smile.
The habit has come with a lot of negative effects for her. Whenever
she cannot find anyone to buy drugs for her, she sells some of her
jewellery, and even handsets. She sold a plot of land she inherited from
her late father and expended it on codeine.
She once owed a codeine supplier N25,000 for accumulated supply.
The habit has affected her relationship with men and she finds it difficult keeping steady relationships.
“I cannot stay with a guy who does not use drug or who cannot buy for me. We cannot be compatible,” she declared.
She agreed to link the reporter with one of the girls in her
codeine-afflicted group who lives with her parent inside Tudunwada,
Kaduna. She called the girl on one of her two phones to explain ‘the
deal.’ The girl agreed after Fatima promised to come along with ‘kaya,’
slang for codeine syrup and complimentary tablets.
On our way to the girl’s house, she asked that we pass by the
Kaduna Central Market. Along the road, a young Hausa boy came to deliver
the drugs to her. She gave the boy N2,000 for two bottles of codeine
and a sachet of Rohypnol.
At Tudunwada, the car in a street corner, Fatima went to call her
friend. The girl, like many of the codeine girls, still lives under her
parents. After about 25 minutes, Fatima appeared with a young girl in
hijab, a veil traditionally worn by Moslem women to cover parts of their
upper body. She entered the car and we chatted.
The new girl, Maimuna Sodangi, 20, was introduced to codeine by
friends. She went on a visit and her friend entertained her with a
bottle of soft drink mixed with codeine syrup. “It was so sweet and I felt so good,” she recounted.
That was three years ago and she has been hooked since then,
graduating from one bottle to six per day. Since she is jobless and
cannot afford the drug, she depends on boyfriends to buy for her.
She takes the codeine home because her illiterate parents do not
know what it is. Sometimes her female friends buy and bring for her at
home since her boyfriends cannot visit her residence.
After the chat, she collected a bottle of codeine from her friend
and tucked it into her bra before covering with the hijab. She strolled
back home, looking like any other girl in the neighbourhood.
Hauwa Mohammed
At Abakpa, a different part of the city, a source introduced the
reporter to another ‘codeine’ girl, Hauwa Mohammed, who hesitated to
reveal identity because she would not want to cause any “anxiety” for
her parents with whom still lives. But after brief persuasion and a
promise of gift, she admitted taking codeine, rohypnol and other
prescription drugs she couldn’t name.
She started taking the drugs two years ago after her fiancé’s death
a few weeks to their wedding. She was 16 at the time, and was the only
one among her four sisters not taking the drugs.
But after the death of her fiancé, she fell into depression and
kept to herself for weeks. Then her sisters advised her that a sip of
codeine syrup would help her ‘forget’ her sorrow. “At the time I almost went mad because of the death of my fiancé,” she recounted.
She tried it once and got hooked.
She takes up to four or five bottles of codeine mixture in a day,
sometimes pouring a bottle or two inside a coke plastic bottle to
deceive her parents.
At 18, she only has a secondary school certificate. She hopes to
get married and stop taking drugs because she wouldn’t want her children
to engage in drug abuse like her. “But I’m hoping I will get a man who
will help me to stop,” she said, with a flat smile.
The story of Fatima, Maimuna and Hauwa exemplify the serious drug
addiction problem facing many young women in many parts of Northern
Nigeria and the changing complexion of the war against drug use and
addiction in the region.
Our investigations show that a great percentage of young women
across northern Nigeria, including students of tertiary institutions,
working class ladies, married women and a vast majority of unemployed
girls, are hooked on drugs.
However, they have rewritten the drug as the new high lies not in
prohibited narcotic substances such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis, but
in simple codeine, commonly found in cough syrups.
The rising drug use among young girls and women may be the fallout
of increasing drug use among young men. However, the women, finding hard
drugs like cocaine too strong and disruptive, have taken to “safer”
“softer” drug such as codeine, which although is banned but is commonly
found in cough syrup. To augment this, the ladies also take a mixture of
prescription drugs, which medical experts tell the icirnigeria.org, are
counterfeit painkillers.
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 in 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.
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 sent to buy cartons of codeine syrup
and hiding them under her bed and inside her wardrobes. Sarah got to
meet 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.
Sarah, 32, is single and always hangs out with friends at Legon Villa or any of the hotels along Barracks Road in Yola.
Northern Women and Drug Abuse
While drug abuse, especially cannabis, has been a long time problem
among male youth in the North, codeine cough syrup is the emerging
cancer ravaging women and girls in the North from Kaduna to Borno and
Yobe to Nasarawa. 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.
Sarah Haruna
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.
Shuaibu Maituraki, an ex-drug user who now runs an NGO devoted to
rehabilitating drug addicts in Kano, is worried that many young girls
and even married women are wasting their lives doing drugs. He said
married women who do not keep boyfriends use their housekeeping money to
buy codeine and that addiction has also led many of the women into
debts or vices and crimes such as stealing of jewelleries at social
functions.
Mr. Maituraki, whose father is also a wealthy Kano businessman,
said he established the Youth Awareness Forum On Drug Abuse, YAFODA, to
save Kano youth from destruction from drug addiction
Addiction to codeine syrup is turning the otherwise conservative
girls and women of the North into social miscreants and rebellious
housewives. It is increasingly becoming common to see Northern girls and
women at night clubs and social spots where they have freedom to drink
codeine, take their tablets and smoke cigarette, and return home wearing
hijab.
More women now are believed to keep late nights since they cannot indulge in addiction freely at home.
It is common in Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Yola and some other cities in
the North, to see women check into hotels or guest houses during the
day to indulge themselves before going back home at night. It is at
these relaxation spots that many of the women rendezvous with boyfriends
or men friends or just fellow girls and women.
Our reporter visited one of the notable guesthouses in Sabon Gari,
Kano, where some of these girls usually lodge for observation. It was
around 2.00 p.m. on a Saturday.
Within an hour, more than 10 girls dressed in hijab had checked in.
Some were driven to the place in taxis while some drove themselves.
There were a few who came on commercial motorbikes.
The manager of the guesthouse revealed to this website that it was
the daily routine for them, adding that the girls could stay up till
midnight before leaving.
More women and girls are also getting involved in petty stealing at
wedding parties and during social visits when in need of cash for more
drugs. Guest and celebrants in the north are now getting more protective
of their valuables, especially jewelleries during social occasions.
Mohammed Idris, State Commander of the National Drug Law Enforcement
Agency, NDLEA, in Sokoto recounted a recent story of what happened at a
wedding party in Sokoto.
Kazeem Abdullahi, an Imam employed by the Kano Emirate Council,
told icirnigeria.org that many marriages are breaking up in the city due
to drug related issues. He revealed that not less than 100 cases of
marital conflicts are brought to the palace of the Emir of Kano for
resolution daily, stressing that the situation had become critical.
Wife of Nigeria’s President, Aisha Buhari, raised an alarm early
this year when she visited Kano State. She said Northern youth,
including women, were wasting their lives with drug abuse. She urged
political and religious leaders in the region to urgently find solution
to the menace.
Mr. Maituraki told our reporter that he has counselled many girls
and housewives who have become addicted to codeine because of marital
problems or influence of friends.
“Some of them told us that they became addicted to codeine when
their husbands took other wives, for some it’s because they have been
divorced while some women believe it will make them attractive by giving
them big eyeballs,” Mr. Maituraki stated.
But many parents are either truly unaware of the menace or are living in denial.
Dahiru Musdapha, Secretary, Adamawa Emirate Council, said that he
had never heard about the problem of drug among women in the state.
“I don’t know anything about this, I’ve never heard about this type of thing before,” he told the reporter.
But his denial is in sharp contrast to what other officials of the
palace, and the state NDLEA Commander, Yakubu Kibo, told our reporter.
The latter said records of the command indicate that more women are
now involved in use of dangerous drugs, specifically codeine syrup.
Officials of the Kano Emirate who also spoke on condition of anonymity
confirmed this too.
“This drug issue is a very serious problem now,” one of them said. “We hear a lot of cases about girls and young women, even married women, taking this thing.”
Drug abuse, according to medical practitioners, occurs when a
person can no longer function normally without taking the drug.
According to Taiwo Sheik, a psychiatrist and chief executive of the
Federal Neuro-psychiatrist Hospital, Kaduna, anyone suffering from drug
abuse is no longer a normal person and is referred to as “suffering from
significant loss of function” which manifests in the person’s
behaviour.
“He has taken the substance to a degree to which he is not able
to function well. In medical language we say there is significant
impairment-the individual is impaired. So it’s now a sickness. That is
what we mean by abuse,” he explained.
And if the statistics reeled out by Mr. Sheik is any indication,
many women and girls in the North are very sick. He said unlike 10 years
ago when drug abuse and addiction was a male problem, more women and
girls are becoming prone to drug and substance abuse.
He said the major drug abused by Northern girls and women is
codeine cough syrup, which they take in quantities that would make them
tipsy and almost impervious to pain – just as narcotics do.
“Ten years ago, for every four or five men, we see one woman.
But today, for every four or five men we see four women. That shows a
trend that suggests increase in the number of women that come with
substance abuse problems. Especially now that the type of substance
people abuse is also changing. Twenty years ago, we don’t talk about
things that people buy from the chemist and take home. Today, that is
what we’re struggling with, cough mixtures. And that is the one that
women abuse most.”
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Culled from Premium Times
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