‘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 stated that drug use and mental illness feed each different, warning that “if we only arrest the symptoms, we will keep missing the cause.”

In an announcement, the Director of Media and Advocacy on the NDLEA headquarters in Abuja, Femi Babafemi, stated Marwa made the comment on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, whereas chairing the fifth version of The Conversation Conference (TCC 5.0), organised by the Intersect Consortium, led by UK-based mostly Consultant Psychiatrist Dr Vincent Udenze, on the Nicon Luxury Hotel, Abuja.

The NDLEA boss stated the occasion, held days after World Mental Health Day, offered a possibility to maneuver from consciousness to motion. He added that behind many instances of drug abuse handled on the company’s rehabilitation services lay untreated ache.

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 convention theme of strategic investments, partnerships and neighborhood-led motion, Marwa stated mental effectively-being couldn’t thrive the place hopelessness and poverty drove folks into dangerous conditions.

He cited the company’s work in three pilot communities in Ondo State, the place households that after trusted illicit cultivation had been helped to ascertain respectable livelihoods.

He referred to as for the well being, schooling, safety, justice and social welfare sectors to work collectively. He additionally urged members to go away the convention 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.