By Abubakar Baba Ahmad.
Youth and Students of Tertiary institutions have been cautioned against dealing in substance abuse or falling into negative peer influence to avoid the consequences of rustication, expulsion imprisonment or permanent incapacitation.
The Deputy Commander, Drug Demand Reduction Division DDRD, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency NDLEA Bauchi Command, Violet Daniel sounded the warning during the orientation exercise of 2025/26 newly admitted students of Sa’adu Zungur University SAZU in Bauchi.
In a paper titled Effect of Drug and Substance Abuse on Campuses, Violet Daniel listed peer influence, availability of drugs, curiosity, frustration, affluence as some of the causes of drug abuse among students and youth population, with one out of every four substance abusers in Nigerian being women.
She urged them to stay away from substances such as lizard dung, soak away ooze, soaked sanitary towels, fermented urine, akurkura to avoid brain disruption, kidney problems, heart disease, cancer among other killer health issues.
“So drug abuse is a business of everybody. If you say I don’t take drugs, what of your friend or your coursemate that takes?
By the time he takes, the effect will affect each and every one of you, because an ordinary human being will not just wake up one day and go and start killing people, or try to collect somebody’s handset and things like that. He must be under the influence of drugs. So drugs affect each and every one”, Violet Daniel sensitises.
The Registrar SAZU, Dr Ahmed Garba Hassan who spoke on what the newly admitted students should know, said the university established in 2011 has metamorphosed into a full fledged conventional institution with nine faculties, noting that the most important element of an institution is the student hence the need for them to always conduct themselves with decorum.
“We expect them to go by the rules and graduate with flying colours. Like our degrees are awarded based on character and learning and we hope that they are going to imbibe what is given to them because the university has provided what it takes to make the student happy in the university”, Dr AG Hassan says.
On his part, the Dean Faculty of Social Sciences SAZU, Professor Musa Adamu Wunti said because Social Sciences has the highest students population and being the centre piece of social engineering, in terms of economic, political, social knowledge and information power, the orientation was convened to ensure they are acquainted with the rules and regulations and solutions to the social problems outside the campus environment.
“We have the largest number of students in the University community and because of that. That is the main reason why we are doing the right thing to guide them to know what to do, what not to do when they are on campus, and we want to bring them to a kind of a forum where everything will be coordinated in terms of rules and regulations”, Professor Wunti explains.
In their separate presentations on Exams Ethics and Administration as well as Personal Development and Career Progression, Dr Haruna Muhammad and the Director Human Resource and Career Development, Dr Wasilu Suleiman urged the students to conduct themselves inline with the University guiding document in other to succeed within and outside the academic environment.
In a remark, the President Social Science Students Association of Nigeria SOSSAN, SAZU chapter, Aliyu Usman promised to work with the management to ensure the newly admitted students abide by all the rule guiding their stay in the institution.
Highlights of the event include paper presentations, and Poem Presentation by a student from Sociology department Amina Ahmed Yusuf.
