THE Federal Government’s recent push to introduce compulsory and random drug tests in tertiary institutions is a headline-grabbing intervention, and one that speaks to a genuine alarm. Minister of Education Dr Tunji Alausa’s endorsement, following talks with National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) boss, Brig-Gen. Buba Marwa (rtd), and the creation of a Substance Use Prevention Unit are welcome signals that officials are taking the problem seriously.
Similarly, there is a promise to revise the secondary-school curriculum to enhance drug education. But while tests may detect a symptom, they will not cure the disease. If the government is serious about rescuing a generation from substance dependence, the policy must move beyond surveillance to prevention and rehabilitation.
The NDLEA’s three-pronged proposal, curriculum reform, stand-alone prevention programmes in schools, and testing at the tertiary level, is a sensible framework in outline. However, the testing regime must therefore be governed by clear rules: informed consent, confidentiality, due process for contested results, linkage to support rather than automatic punishment, and independent oversight to prevent abuse.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), estimates roughly 14.3 million Nigerians aged 15–64 use drugs non-medically. That scale makes previous strategies futile unless they are paired with primary prevention that begins long before university admission. Prevention must be embedded across all spheres of the education sector. Updating the secondary-school curriculum is necessary but not sufficient: effective drug education should be taught by trained staff who can build life skills, emotional regulation and critical thinking, as much as deliver facts about substances.
Communities, families and faith groups must be mobilised. Parents need easily accessible information and support on how to talk to children about drugs; they should be part of school-based prevention programmes and be encouraged to use voluntary screening where appropriate. At the same time, policymakers must recognise the social drivers of substance misuse. Unemployment, poverty and a lack of purpose are strong risk factors for experimentation and dependency. Any credible strategy must therefore be accompanied by initiatives that expand youth employment, vocational training, and mental health services.
The Government must invest in properly staffed drug treatment centres integrated within primary and secondary health care, provide counselling services and fund community reintegration programmes that help recovered young people return to productive lives. The Ministry of Health, in partnership with Education, should map clear pathways so that a positive test leads quickly to an evidence-based intervention rather than to expulsion or incarceration.
Regulation of pharmaceutical and local medicine outlets must also be tightened. Many of the substances abused by young Nigerians, tramadol, codeine formulations and other stimulants, are either diverted from legitimate medical uses or sold over the counter in poorly supervised outlets. Enforcement should therefore target illegal distributors and unscrupulous vendors, not only end users.
Finally, the rhetoric of punishment needs rebalancing with the language of public health. Young people who use drugs are patients and community members, not merely problems to be removed. Policies that combine education, rehabilitation and enforcement will stand a far better chance of reversing the trend than a regime of compulsory testing alone.
The proposal by the Ministry of Education requires both urgency and wisdom. Random drug tests in universities are a tool, not a strategy. If the Ministry’s new Substance Use Prevention Unit can forge an integrated approach, one that starts in the family and the classroom, invests in treatment, tightens controls on supply, and addresses the root socioeconomic causes, then the nation will not merely identify users; it will protect, treat and restore them. That is how to keep a generation from being defined by its worst mistakes and instead reclaim them for productive citizenship.
