16/01/2025
Nigeria needs home-grown strategies to combat drug use problems
The magnitude of Nigeria's psychoactive drug use problem requires the development of adaptable and home-grown evidence-based strategies that incorporate systems change thinking at its core to facilitate enduring systematic changes in the way that drug treatment and prevention is approached in Nigeria.
It is against this backdrop that the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Benin City in collaboration with Igbinedion University, Okada Nigeria through the Centre for Addiction Studies Education and Research (CASER) facilitated the hosting of the Nigeria International Technology Transfer Centre (Nigeria ITTC) in 2022. The centre has since constituted an advisory board that was formally inaugurated comprising stakeholders from the Federal Ministry of Health, UNODC, ECOWAS, other professional bodies in mental health and drug treatment and prevention such as Association of Psychiatrist in Nigeria, Nigeria Society of Addiction Medicine (NSAM), Narcotics Anonymous, Kaduna State Bureau for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (KABUSA), International Society of Substance Use Professionals (ISSUP) and ICUDDR with a goal to facilitate the dissemination and translation of evidence-based interventions for drug prevention and treatment in Nigeria.
Recently, efforts at achieving this goal received a boost with the allocation of physical office space and staff by the Medical Director, Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Dr Imafidon Agbonile. Speaking while taking the President of the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN); Prof. Taiwo Obindo as well as the co-ordinator for International Consortium of Universities for Drug Demand Reduction (ICUDDR) in Nigeria; Prof Michael Ezenwa on a guided tour, he emphasized that synchronized efforts in drug prevention and treatment founded on sound implementation research evidence, an identified gap which the centre hopes to fill.
