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Friday, November 22, 2019

ANALYSIS: 'Horror houses' shed light on care crisis for Nigerian addicts

Issued on: 23/11/2019 - 03:38Modified: 23/11/2019 - 06:36 GMT/ZULU

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Lagos

by Tokun Lawal and Biodun Iginla, France24 News Analysts

The day his wife walked out 10 years ago, Nigerian musician Jagunlabi started taking drugs to make the shadows go away.

The drugs came to stay.

Today, after suffering a heart attack, Jagunlabi is desperate to end his addiction but has no idea how to get help.

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"I don't know where to go, I can't trust (rehab) centres here," he told us at France24, sitting in a park in the nation's economic capital Lagos. "They can chain you, molest you."

Substance abuse in Africa's most populous country has been described as an "epidemic" by the United Nations but there is almost no proper treatment available for those trying to recover.

The grim problem has come to light after a string of raids on so-called rehabilitation centres where hundreds of inmates, mainly men and boys, have been found chained and abused in atrocious conditions.

The unregulated institutes -- billed as Islamic schools or run by evangelical churches -- are used by desperate families who often send relatives struggling with drugs, drink or mental illness in the hope they will get better.

But the treatment is brutal and relies more on prayer than proven medical interventions.

Jagunlabi, who gave only his stage name, recounted how his family had tried to take him to a religious camp just two days earlier.

"A week of prayer and fasting… it would kill me. I'm too weak," he said.

Once a successful performer who has now seen his career destroyed by addiction, he showed off newspaper clippings about his music from the early 2000s.

"I used to be big," he said. "I need medication, I need to sleep".

- Just 300 psychiatrists -

The scandal over the abusive centres -- dubbed "horror houses" by the media -- has put pressure on the authorities.

President Muhammadu Buhari insisted "no responsible democratic government would tolerate the existence of the torture chambers" and officials have sought to close the worst of them.

But moves to clamp down on the facilities have had mixed results.

In the city of Kano, in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria where most of the abusive institutes have been uncovered, many relatives have refused to pick up those freed from the centres.

Part of the problem is they have nowhere else to take them.

Across Nigeria, a vast country of almost 200 million people, there are only some 300 psychiatrists, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report in November.

Many psychiatrists, discouraged by the lack of resources and status, leave left the country, mostly for the West.

But Dr. Ogonnaya Ndupu decided to stay.

She worked for six years in a state psychiatric hospital. Today, she is employed at Lifecrest Rehabilitation service, a small private centre working with addicts in the middle-class Lagos district of Lekki.

"When it comes to mental health there is no monitoring going on," she lamented to us at France24.

"We have government facilities but they are in a deplorable state."

Meanwhile "drug abuse is on the rise in Nigeria", she insisted, as economic problems mount for people across the country.

"Times are tougher, more challenging for everybody."

Life is particularly hard in Mushin, an impoverished and violent area of Lagos, where crack cocaine and bottles of codeine cough syrup circulate alongside illegal firearms.

"Cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine, codeine, tramadol," said local resident Lala, rattling off a list of the illicit substances to be found.

Already at midday, teenagers, old men and young mothers can be seen smoking marijuana as they try to cushion the come down from their latest trip.

- 'The main issue' -

An area that locals call the "drug ghetto" has been a no-go zone for the authorities for a long time.

But one person who can enter there is Pastor Keji Hamilton -- on a self-proclaimed mission from God to help addicts.

A former musician who played with Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, Hamilton says he "met Jesus" one day as he inhaled on a crack pipe surrounded by three prostitutes.

He thought he would die and asked God to save him despite not being a believer.

Now he is seeking to use more than just the Bible to help people as he tours the mean streets of Mushin.

Hamilton underwent training in psychology and social care and opened his own professional rehab centre.

"You need to be trained for this job, you need skills," he told AFP.

He shakes people's hands and talks to them as he tours the down-trodden neighbourhood -- a contact for those struggling with addiction and a message that there is a solution.

"Drugs are the main issue in Nigeria," he said. "But the government is not interested to solve it."

Monday, March 20, 2017

Orly airport attacker 'had been drinking, taking drugs', autopsy reveals

Latest update : 2017-03-20 10H:12 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, France24, Paris

The man shot dead at Paris's Orly airport after attacking a soldier was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time, a judicial source said Sunday.

Investigators are still trying to understand what motivated Saturday's assault by 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem, which led to a major security scare and the temporary closure of the capital's second-busiest airport.

"Toxicology tests carried out on Sunday showed an alcohol level of 0.93 grams per litre in his blood, and the presence of cannabis and cocaine," the source said.

Ben Belgacem's father had insisted earlier Sunday that his son was "not a terrorist" and that his actions were caused by drink and drugs.

Ben Belgacem, who was born in France to Tunisian parents, grabbed a soldier on patrol at Orly's southern terminal on Saturday morning. He put a gun to her head and seized her rifle, saying he wanted to "die for Allah".

The attacker, who had also fired at police in a northern Paris suburb earlier that morning, was shot dead by two other soldiers after a scuffle.

Ben Belgacem's father insisted his son -- who had spent time in prison for armed robbery and drug-dealing -- was not a extremist.

"My son was not a terrorist. He never prayed, and he drank," the father, who was in shock and whose first name was not given, told Europe 1 radio.

Investigators were examining his telephone.

The attack at Orly comes with France still on high alert following a wave of jihadist attacks that have claimed more than 230 lives in two years.

The violence has made security a key issue in France's two-round presidential election on April 23 and May 7.

Not on terror watchlist

Ben Belgacem's brother and cousin were released Sunday after they, like the attacker's father, were held for questioning. All three had approached police themselves on Saturday after the attack.

After spending Friday night in a bar with his cousin, Ben Belgacem was pulled over by police for speeding in the gritty northern Paris suburb of Garges-les-Gonesse, where he lived, just before 7:00 am.

He drew a gun and fired, slightly injuring one officer. Shortly after, he contacted his relatives to tell them he had "done something stupid", they told police.

Ben Belgacem later appeared at the bar where he had been the previous night, firing more shots and stealing another car before continuing on to the airport.

He had been investigated in 2015 over suspicions he had radicalised while serving jail time, but his name did not feature on the list of those thought to pose a high risk.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Ben Belgacem appeared to have become caught up in a "sort of headlong flight that became more and more destructive".

Dozens of flights to and from Orly were cancelled during an hours-long shutdown after the incident, but by Sunday afternoon air traffic had returned to normal, a spokeswoman for the Paris airports authority said.

The shooting took place on the second day of a visit to Paris by Britain's Prince William and his wife Kate, which was unaffected.

'I've screwed up'

Ben Belgacem's father told Europe 1 his son had called him after the first police shooting "in a state of extreme agitation".

"He said to me: 'Daddy, please forgive me. I've screwed up with a police officer'."

At the time of his death, Ben Belgacem was carrying a petrol can in his backpack, as well as 750 euros ($805) in cash, a copy of the Koran, a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

A small amount of cocaine and a machete were found during a search of his home on Saturday.

Soldiers guarding key sites have been targeted in four attacks in the past two years but escaped with only minor injuries.

In mid-February, a machete-wielding Egyptian man attacked a soldier outside Paris's Louvre museum, injuring him slightly, before being shot and wounded.

President Francois Hollande said Saturday his government was "determined to fight relentlessly against terrorism".

Date created : 2017-03-20

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Biodun Iginla, BBC News