AMORC CAMPAIGNS AGAINST DRUGS ABUSE AS NDLEA DEMANDS STIFFER LAWS FOR PEDDLERS
By Uchenna Eletuo (07031241955)
Lagos, Sept. 23, 2023 (NAN) The Lagos zone of the Rosicrucian Order, (AMORC) on Saturday campaigned against illicit drugs intake among youths while the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) demands stiffer laws to prosecute offenders.
The two bodies, made the appeal at an annual lecture organised by AMORC to educate people on the dangers of illicit drugs intake and trafficking, said that such indulgence retards individual and community growth.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos reports that, the programme with the theme “Annual Pyramid and Public Lecture” held at the AMORC headquarters, Ilupeju Lagos.
AMORC, known for its realistic approach to human behaviour, through its pyramid of ideals inscripted in a pyramid designed format thought people ways to avoid drug abuse.
The words on the pyramid platform from the base were: Truth, tolerance, honour, justice, temperance, honesty, fortitude, morality and chastity at the peak.
Participants that cut across people of divers status in the society, youths and children, symbolically placed a stone each at the centre, to build a pyramid to inscribe the ideals in the minds of people.
The symbolic construction, accompanied with the recitations of the thoughts of forebears of civilisation, was a tradition to remind people of those that toed the ideals to sustain human society.
Speaking at the event, the Chairman of the programme Mr Johnson Ikube, said that, life as God made it was a matter of choice.
Ikube, Grand Counsellor of the order from Ghana, said that the society such as the family, school and faith organisations has role to play in order to dissuade young people from illicit drugs intake.
According to him people should embrace the pyramid ideals as a way of life to resist the urge for illicit drug intake.
“As an adult you should purge yourself of drugs abuse to be a role model to the younger generation. You should adopt a mental practice that will make illicit drugs intake an eyesore to the people around you,” he said.
Ikube decried the rate the menace was becoming a norm in society, said that it retards individual and community growth, therefore should be avoided.
Speaking at the event, the guest lecturer and representative of the NDELA, Mr Joseph Dan’ Azumi, an Assistant. Superintendent Narcotics, said that, the organisation under the leadership of Gen. Buba Marwa Rtd. had been doing all it could to stop drug abuse and trafficking.
In the lecture, tagged “Drugs Abuse a Reverse to Normalcy”, he described illicit drugs intake as one of the undoings of the society, saying abusers and traffickers have devised varying ways to conseal substances from the eagle eyes of the operatives.
He regretted the dearth of stringent laws to prosecute culprits, appealed to President Bola Ahmed-Tinubu’s administration to accent to the reviewed NDLEA bill before him to enable the agency stifle the racketeering and consumption of narcotics in the country.
He bemoaned the subsisting youths recruitment into the menace urging teachers to be involved in the fight against the social infraction as children spend more time in schools than at home.
He regretted peer pressure that advanced the problem, asked teachers to be alive to their child character moulding and not to be detered by parents excesses when teachers penalised children for wrong doings.
He said that, if a child was into illicit substances intake, the outcome could smear a whole community.
(NAN)
