‘Drug use, mental illness feed each other’ – NDLEA boss Marwa

The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (retd), has said that drug use and mental illness feed each other, warning that “if we only arrest the symptoms, we will keep missing the cause.”

In a statement, the Director of Media and Advocacy at the NDLEA headquarters in Abuja, Femi Babafemi, said Marwa made the remark on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, while chairing the fifth edition of The Conversation Conference (TCC 5.0), organised by the Intersect Consortium, led by UK-based Consultant Psychiatrist Dr Vincent Udenze, at the Nicon Luxury Hotel, Abuja.

The NDLEA boss said the event, held days after World Mental Health Day, provided an opportunity to move from awareness to action. He added that behind many cases of drug abuse treated at the agency’s rehabilitation facilities lay untreated pain.

According to him, “For too long, we treated mental health as a private burden, hidden behind shame and silence. In my work at the NDLEA, I see the cost of that silence daily. Behind many cases of drug abuse is untreated pain: depression nobody noticed, trauma nobody addressed, a young person who found a substance before finding help. Drug use and mental illness feed each other. If we only arrest the symptoms, we will keep missing the cause.”

Speaking on the conference theme of strategic investments, partnerships and community-led action, Marwa said mental well-being could not thrive where hopelessness and poverty drove people into harmful situations.

He cited the agency’s work in three pilot communities in Ondo State, where families that once depended on illicit cultivation had been helped to establish legitimate livelihoods.

He called for the health, education, security, justice and social welfare sectors to work together. He also urged participants to leave the conference with commitments “to finance what works, to scale proven community models, to put women, children and the vulnerable first, and to hold one another accountable for results.”

“Let us build a Nigeria where seeking help is an act of courage, where recovery is possible, and where no one suffers alone,” he added.