That evening, I feel like rambling around to enjoy the refreshening breeze that gushed unceasingly from the lips of green plants. The environment was as cool as the underworld. The silence that engulfed the surrounding, is thought provoking.
I felt briefly, what those residing around cemetries enjoyed perpetually. The sweetness of the walk entered my medulla that I didn’t know when I covered a long distance. The inertia was something I didn’t recognize in a hurry. It was nothing but the thought that flows down the recesses of my mind. I was distracted by a smell that gushed out from an indeterminable spot.
Everywhere was covered by the odour of the burning weed. Initially I was scared. I didn’t know whether it was safe to continue or to appreciate a U-turn before receiving an unprepared robbery. The problem is not dealing away with my phone but dealing away with my life.
While I was contemplating this, Emeka’s voice landed with my name. I was shocked. Doubt left me immediately. I went straight to the direction of the voice. My guys had formed a circle, burning weeds like tomorrow didn’t not exist.
In their language, they were offering incense to their Maker. Even Emeka whom I was ready, before then, to swear for that he doesn’t know how weed looks like. For Ekene, though I haven’t seen him but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him doing such. His life has never been straight. But for Emeka, I was utterly disappointed because he was an ex seminarian.
The burial we come for turned to ache my stomach. I had no other option than being patient till my classmate’s mother was lowered to the grave the next day before I could hang my bag on my back and leave.
I was seriously perturbed by the rate with which this guys were swallowing this thing which shows that they didn’t start that day. They had been into that though in pipeline. I wonder who was free now among the youths since students that were highly respected for discipline are becoming footprints of indiscipline.
It is not to say that smoking is bad a thing to be consumed or that it is the mark of an irresponsible child. But the rate and the way with which people consume it in this Tropical region tell more negativity than positivity. As such, marijuana is contraband and anyone taking or abusing it is regarded as a hoodlum.
Nevertheless, it is now obvious that the rate with which the youth take hard drugs is quite acrimonious. It might be part of the reasons why increase in youth madness is unlimited.
I counted up to eight mad boys in a particular area of Nsukka. None of these mad boys have exceeded 30 years judging from their appearances.
It is quite a thing of sorrow than humor. If our youths all take to madness, what will the future be like? It is not as if hardship in the country has no quota in the madness. It is the goad of almost all the negativity seen in corners around the country.
Some will attribute it to ‘Yahoo rituals.’ Most Nigerians believed that young boys are into exotic rituals in order to hijack the head of their clients. Anyway, I wonder the connection between rituals and individuals targeted. But whichever way, depression and pessimism are goads of madness as well.
The only thing I could accept pertaining to the Yahoo boy’s madness is that over expectation can engineer such disorder in someone’s mental arena. But for now, we must shift our minds from rituals to other things that are predominant among the youths that can introduce such alarming madness. From my observations so far, drug abuse is instrumental.
There are many easier forms of hard drugs and many means of consuming them. Some are dissolved in soft drinks. Of course, they are hard to detect. All of a sudden you will hear that a student has committed suicide. You will first of all blame it on academic stress and finally, poverty.
But let truth be told: Most of the students that engage in suicide are drug addicts. Ok, what will you say about those that die on top of women either in a hotel room or in a lodge. They are drug addicts. They take drugs in order to protract on bed. But unfortunately, the drug extended the bed rest to perpetuity.
I know, in countries like this where everything that happen has a diabolic engineer. Such deaths are not left out. The enemy has done the killing. No matter whom you accuse to be the enemy, check first whether drugs are around the corner. No enemy of youths these days surpasses drugs.
It has killed more youths than it exalted. The youths of course, are taking drugs to attain emotional exaltation. But the end as we await, will justify the means.
What can we say of those girls that often got mad after they have been dropped by an exotic car. They have been used for rituals. Their pants were used by Yahoo boys. What’s the connection between someone’s pant and his mental condition. The only connection that can be viewed from there is that a mentally meticulous fellow will always keep her pants clean and in order.
Otherwise is for the otherwise. But when we talk about the unrestrainable madness that is predominantly raining among girls at this present time, drug must be appreciated. Such girls you see mad after they have been dropped from SUV have been in drug all through the night in order to satisfy the god of sex that hired her. Yes, I believe that diabolism has taken our psychic parliament.
Even at that, we should not be comfortable with it. If we attribute all causes of negativity to diabolism, without doubt, growth will elude us. Diabolism has no proof of itself, how much more solution to it’s problems. The fact remains that whatever we take in detrrmines what we give out. A grinder cannot give you an output of grinded corn when the input was melon.
Some of these youths were peerly influenced into hard drugs. They never chose it. But they lack the mental courage to resist it either because they want to be on with their friends. Some think that their problems are now higher than their heads, so they need a vehicle that can lift it for them.
All the same. drug do not in any way solve any problem of man. It is an opium. When it expires, your problem will come back waving at you. It was never dismissed. It was only suspended. Why not seek for a solution that is perpetual to problems than beat about the bush? It is obvious that one can never be entirely free from problem. Solving one problem amounts creating another one.
The strive to avoid problems is the strife to die because, from the little we know, it is only in death that problems vanish. Once there is life, of course, there must be problems.
When we talk about drug abuse control in Nigeria, we talk about drug abusers (major) controlling drug abusers (minor). That is, those who seem to be fighting drug abuse are inhabitants of it. I wonder how such a fight can bear fruit. It was St Gregory de great who said that when conscience becomes an obstruction to speech, what it taught is hard to believe.
Drug abuse cannot be effectively fought when the agents fighting it are into it full time. It is even hard to say who is not into it. Though, it seems to be overlooked, but sincerely speaking, the effect of drug abuse is bare in the world especially in our country Nigeria.
Families are deterioration, companies folding, relationships dislocating, but amidst all, no one has mustered the courage to fish out the goad of such inconsistencies visible in all most all the areas of human endeavor in our society. Drug abuse, I will continue to say, has an upper hand in what is going wrong presently in our lives and society.
So, it becomes a Clarion call to all concerned citizens to fight drug abuse in accordance to our capacities. Drug addiction has no positive effect. Everything about it is negative. Why can’t you follow your son or daughter up until he or she drops it? Why can’t you preach against it among the young people?
You that is living in drugs in the name of achieving Highness, in what area of life has that Highness taken you higher? It is nothing but a deceptive Highness. It does not raise your finances in anyway. Instead, it sucks it to the bottom. Your societal status is rather degraded.
You mental composition is dislocated. What actually is your benefit? You prefer to appear irresponsible, yet claim to be responsible. Obviously, the way we treat ourselves is the way others would treat us. However, rethinking and dropping of hard drugs is the way one can rescue himself from the pit he has fallen into, due to drug abuse, especially mental degradation.
Any condition one finds himself is determined by one’s mental condition. You cannot be in a condition higher than that of your mentality. So it is more than dangerous to deteriorate one’s mental condition because, it will automatically be tantamount to deteriorating his life. Therefore, amidst all things, one must learn to reverence his brain and life in general as something that is sacred and deserve utmost respect.
Ewezuga Nwankwo.
St Michael’s Catholic Church Agbiligba Nanka. Â
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