NOA warns Gombe farmers against using hard drugs for energy

As farmers in Gombe State commence wet season farming, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) has warned them to desist from using hard drugs to boost their energy while working on farms.

The director of NOA in the state, Mrs. Adaline Patari, gave the warning in an interview in Gombe on Friday.

Patari said that the act of using hard drugs or substance abuse among farm workers to get ‘extra’ strength to work was detrimental to their health.

According to her, using drugs not prescribed by doctors has dire consequences for the health and mental state of the person using them.

“Just as farmers are beginning to plant and engage in other farming activities, it is necessary to inform them that using hard drugs or non-prescribed drugs has negative effects on their health.

“Farmers in the state must work with their natural energy and not induce their food or drink to boost their energy.

“It is better to adopt mechanized farming by forming cooperative societies in communities than using drugs to help them farm without getting tired,” she said.

The NOA director said that her agency, in collaboration with other relevant agencies, had been carrying out a series of advocacy campaigns against drug abuse among youths.

She also cautioned farmers who were in the habit of adulterating milk and pudding with drugs before giving them to the children being used as laborers on their farms to enable them to work tirelessly.

“If you are in that habit, it is wrong; it is child abuse to even use children on farms when they are supposed to be in school,” she said.

Patari called on concerned agencies to embark on farm monitoring so as to bring perpetrators to book and make an example of them.

She said: “Communities also have a duty to ensure that youths and children in their communities do not use unprescribed drugs on farms, as such could have an effect on the community too.”

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that substance abuse has, in recent years, become rampant among farm workers in the state.

NAN also reports that the Emir of Dukku, Alhaji Haruna Abdulrasheed, had, in 2022, raised the alarm that some parents were in the habit of giving their children hard drugs to boost their strength while working on farms.

Abdulrasheed said many residents who engaged in such acts were unaware of the effects of using hard drugs, hence giving them to their children to boost their energy while on the farm.