A crisis hiding in plain sight is now impossible to ignore. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), and the MTN Foundation have called for stronger collaboration, innovation, and community-based interventions to combat the growing menace of substance abuse among young people in Enugu State and across Nigeria.
The call was made during a stakeholders’ conference organised in Enugu as part of activities marking the 2026 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, held under the theme: “The World Drug Problem: Persisting Issues, New Challenges, Innovation Responses.” The event drew a wide cross-section of participants from government, civil society, health institutions, and the private sector, all united by a shared urgency to protect Nigeria’s next generation.
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The numbers emerging from Enugu State paint a deeply troubling picture. The NDLEA Enugu Command’s Deputy Commander of Narcotics, Owunwa Ibezimako, disclosed that a recent survey conducted by NDLEA and UNODC revealed that over 360,000 youths in the state are actively involved in drug use, representing roughly 13.4 percent of Enugu’s youth population. Ibezimako did not mince words about the scope of what authorities are now confronting. ” The illicit drug consumption menace has assumed a staggering and alarming level and has permeated not just tertiary institutions but secondary and primary schools,” he said.
Ibezimako further warned that drug abuse remained a major enabler of organised crime in Nigeria, with illicit drug trafficking and consumption continuing to fuel criminal activities across the country. He added that Nigeria had increasingly become a transit route for dangerous substances, describing drug-related crime as a growing national security concern.
For the MTN Foundation’s Executive Director, Odunayo Sanya, the statistics are not merely data points. They represent real families unravelling in silence. Sanya described substance abuse as a devastating challenge that destroys lives and places enormous emotional and financial burdens on families, painting a vivid picture of the human toll: “You can imagine a mother going to a market and hearing of a disturbance somewhere and running there because it might just be the child she has not seen in months.”
Sanya stressed that the foundation’s anti-drug advocacy aligned with its focus on youth development, capacity building, and economic empowerment, adding that substance abuse remained a major threat to Nigeria’s future human capital. She pointed to the reach of the foundation’s Anti-Substance Abuse Programme (ASAP), launched in 2019, as evidence of its deepening commitment to the fight. According to Sanya, the ASAP initiative has reached more than 50,000 secondary school students nationwide, trained over 1,500 teachers, and indirectly impacted millions of Nigerians through awareness campaigns.
The MTN Foundation’s engagement in Enugu extends well beyond drug awareness. Sanya highlighted the foundation’s broader interventions in the state, which include ICT and business skills training for youths, health facility upgrades, teacher development programmes, and women empowerment initiatives.
The ASAP programme operates through a multi-agency architecture that has steadily widened its net. MTN Foundation’s anti-drug campaign is being executed in collaboration with the NDLEA, the UNODC, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), and other stakeholders. In collaboration with the NYSC, the foundation has engaged 86,400 students and 1,440 teachers from 144 public secondary schools across 12 states through awareness campaigns and quiz competitions. The Foundation has also led advocacy walks in tertiary institutions in Abuja, Enugu, Kano, and Lagos, and partnered with NDLEA to support a 24/7 toll-free psycho-social helpline for youth in need.
The scale of NDLEA’s own ground-level response in Enugu underscores how far the problem has spread. Since launching the War Against Drug Abuse (WADA) in Enugu, the NDLEA has reached over 69,000 people across 135 locations, including schools and religious centres, educating them on the risks, while also promoting sports and endurance walks to offer healthy alternatives.
Beyond the Enugu conference, the MTN Foundation has been building toward a national evidence base to guide future interventions. On April 29, 2026, the MTN Foundation, UNODC, and the Office of the Vice President signed a Letter of Acceptance for Cooperation on the National Substance Use Survey in Nigeria, formalising a tripartite partnership designed to generate the first nationally representative data on drug use among secondary school students in the country. That effort reflects a broader recognition that policy without data is a blunt instrument, and that meaningful progress requires both the will to act and the evidence to act wisely.
Speakers at the Enugu conference warned that rising substance abuse among youths poses serious threats to public health, security, education, and socio-economic development, stressing the need for a coordinated response involving government agencies, development partners, schools, families, and communities. It is a challenge that no single institution, however resourced, can solve alone, and the events of June 10 in Enugu made clear that the time for siloed responses has long passed.
