The prevalence of illegal rehabilitation centres across northern Nigeria has once again brought to the fore issues surrounding drug abuse and mental health in Nigeria, SAMSON BENJAMIN writes.
The Police in Ilorin, Thursday, October 24, rescued 108 victims comprising children, men, and women, from an illegal rehabilitation centre located at Gaa’Odota area in Ilorin West local government area of Kwara state.
This is the latest raid on illegal rehabilitation centres, unearthed by the police and other security agencies in recent time.
President Muhammadu Buhari had given a directive on October 19, 2019, to security agencies to fish out such centres.
The presidential order was sequel to initial discoveries of two of such abodes in many parts of northern Nigeria. In Kaduna state alone two centres were discovered, both were in Rigasa, Igabi Local Government Area.
In the first centre discovered on September 26, 2019, over 300 people were rescued, while in the second, popularly known as Malam Niga Rehabilitation and Skills Acquisition Centre, over 147 people were rescued.
Similar centres have also been discovered in Kano, Adamwa, Bauchi and Katsina states. Just as 360 inmates were rescued in Daura, in President Buhari’s very own back yard.
I was tricked – inmate
According to Bello Hamza, a 42-year-old inmate, he was tricked to the centre by his family who were interested in taking over his share of inheritance.
“I have spent three months here. I am supposed to be pursuing my Masters at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
“This is supposed to be an Islamic centre, but trying to run away from here attracts severe punishment; they tie people and hang them to the ceiling. However, engaging in homosexuality attracts no punishment,” he said in an interview with journalists.
Neither rehabilitation centre nor Islamic school
Similarly, also speaking with journalists after one of the raids, the Commissioner of Police in charge of Kaduna state, CP Ali Janga, said: “We received information that something is going on in this rehabilitation centre or Islamic centre. On getting here, we discovered that this is neither a rehabilitation centre nor Islamic school.
“The man who is operating this home claimed that parents brought their children here for rehabilitation. But, from the look of things, this is not a rehabilitation centre. No reasonable parent will bring their children to this place.”
Proliferation of centres
In a chat with Blueprint Weekend on the issue a lecturer in the Department of Islamic Studies, National Open University of Nigeria, Mr Musbau Aminu, said people who live in northern Nigeria have always known that such centres exist.
“I don’t think there is any person who grew up in the North who can claim that they are not aware of these schools. We all know they abuse children there. Growing up in Kano in the 1980s and 1990s I was aware of a number of schools like this.
“People believe that these schools have the spiritual power to heal. They do not mind how much the children are dehumanised, or how they are treated, as long as their children receives a Koranic education and are rehabilitated,” he said.
According to him, “With a lack of publicly-funded options, private rehabilitation centres in the form of these schools have become a final resort for parents who have run out of options. Even those who manage to access a public facility find conditions are not much better.”
It’s replica of slave trade era
Also, a Kaduna-based human rights activist and executive director of Centre for the Protection of Human Right, a Civilian Society Organizations (CSO), Hamzat Aliyu, in an interview with our correspondent lamented the inhuman and degrading conditions the inmates were subjected to.
He vowed that his organisation would collaborate with the relevant agencies to ensure that justice was done to the inmates.
“What we saw was a replica of the slave trade era with humans in chains. It is unfortunate that people are being subjected to the unimaginable torture, inhuman and degrading treatment in this 21st century.
“Women were serially sexually abused. I strongly condemn these actions. They are totally unacceptable and are clear violations of human rights,” he said.
MURIC renounces centres
Similarly, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has renounced these rehabilitation centres recently discovered in some states across the North as Islamiyyah schools.
MURIC’s denial was contained in a statement by its director Professor Ishaq Akintola and read in part: “Those torture centres are not Islamiyyah schools. The only thing going on in Islamiyyah schools all over the country is teaching and learning of Islamic subjects, particularly Qur’an and hadith. Our malams love their students. Our malams are mentors and responsible people.
“For the avoidance of doubts, we strongly condemn what is going on in the torture chambers and we dissociate Islamiyyah schools from them. It is horrible, inhuman and barbaric. But the fact remains that those places are not Islamiyyah schools.
“They are rehabilitation centres. A clear distinction exists between Islamiyyah schools and reform centres. This would have been clear enough if efforts had been made to visit Islamiyyah schools after which comparisons can be made.
“The inmates were brought there by their parents after noticing their weird and bohemian behaviour. They are victims of drug addiction whose anti-social demeanours made their parents to seek solutions to their drug addiction.
“The fact that parents came out to protest against the police action in the centres further cements our position. The parents even demanded immediate return of their children and wards to those centres.”
The group further stated: “We reject the methods used to reform drug addicts in those centres. They are too crude and too inhuman. Chaining and severe flogging are unacceptable correctional methods. Those styles are sadistic.
“They are the height of man’s inhumanity to man. But there is no scintilla of doubt that they stand in contradistinction to well-known and acceptable teaching methodology in Islamiyyah schools.”
Islamic leader backs centre
However, a popular northern-based Islamic leader Sheikh Mahmud Abubakar Gumi has disagreed with assertions that Islamic rehabilitation centres are torture and detention centres.
Speaking with Blueprint Weekend, particularly about the Rigasa Centre in Kaduna, he said the centre remained the best religious rehabilitation centre for Muslims youths who are into drug addictions, and needs government support.
The Islamic leader also disagreed with the allegation of sexual abuse, arguing that the centre is a crowded place, and too open for such illicit acts, “except they are talking about the students themselves. I would not know.”
He said he was aware of the existence of the centre and had visited the place in the past, adding that Islamic religious indoctrination and teaching remained the best rehabilitation among addicted Muslims than secular centre.
“People rehabilitated through Islamic indoctrination and teaching hardly returned back after conversion because of the belief as they behaves and see themselves more like Imam and Mallams,” he said.
On issues of torture and chains, he said: “Some young drug addicts were brought to the centre by parents when their conditions had already gone too bad and difficult to even control by the parents themselves, and therefore are required to be chain a while in other not to cause harm to themselves or inflict injury on others.
“The people running the centre had called me to come and see the rehabilitation centre for drug addicts. The best way of rehabilitation is through religious indoctrination because it involved your faith. It is better than secular rehabilitation because the child can go back to drugs after secular rehabilitation, but can’t go back to drugs if rehabilitated by religious indoctrination because they are brought up religiously through faith.
“Government should empower the centres because 99.9 per cent of the students were brought by parents because they overpowered their parents. All they need is governments support and better facilities, rather than closing the centres,” he said.
Proprietor discredits allegations
Similarly, in an interview with Blueprint Weekend, the founder of Malam Niga Rehabilitation Centre, Kaduna, Malam Lawal Yusuf Muduru, said his centre has successfully rehabilitated over 2,000 people.
“The reports said that the female inmates practice lesbianism and females were sexually harassed and raped, but nothing of such happened here. I am always on ground. I have my family living here in the rehabilitation centre. I reside in the centre as well.
“Even if an inmate lies on his bed and shift or we notice any movement, we will beam flashlight to know what is happening. Even if you are to urinate, you must be granted permission to do so. I don’t know where the fabricated reports that females in my rehabilitation centre were sexually molested came from.
“We have successfully rehabilitated more 2,000 persons in this centre, so what will stop them from going to find out from one or two persons among them whether they have been sexually molested or maltreated during their stay here,” he asked.
Centres consequence of government’s failure
Inability of appropriate authorities to institutionalise functional mechanism that regulates reformatory homes, otherwise known as rehabilitation centres, has been identified as directly responsible for the proliferation of illegal rehabilitation centres across Nigeria, especially in the northern parts of the country.
A psychologist and lecturer in Nasarawa University Keffi, Dr Abdullahi Yunusa, insisted that government in the first instance should be held responsible for a failed social justice system.
“You must also understand that people prefer the local way of rehabilitation due to the absence of institutionalised social welfare from the government that can serve as an alternative centre.
“The only corrective social justice available to parents is prison custody and undergoing such a system comes with prices the inmate must pay, such as stigmatisation, an ex-convict, societal re-entry and many extra-judicial consequences.
“Apart from being cumbersome and expensive, the person is bound to suffer unintended consequences for serving in the prisons.
“How many parents will want their children to pass through this stigma? Will you want to take your child to the Police for not going to school, playing gamble, smoking or simple theft,” he asked.
Continuing he said: “As a result of this, many resort to the traditional alternative of solving challenges of juvenile delinquencies, such that members of the society violating societal norms and customs, criminal acts and all sorts of vices are taken to these centres, which attract less stigma, are less expensive and traditionally acceptable.”
Drug addiction
United Nations report indicated that the North-west Nigeria had three million drug users in 2017. This probably explains the increase in the number of these rehabilitation centres in the North.
Speaking on the issue, a drug and public analyst Dr. Femi Oyediran explained that people have capitalised on the prevalence of drug abuse in the North to establish rehabilitation centres.
“Drug abuse in the northern part of the country is very high. And as a result, a lot of people having ailment associated with the taking of drugs are referred to rehab centres.
“It is not every one of them that opened a centre that has good intention, as some of them established this for ulterior motives, especially to make money.”
Oyediran, who maintained that the buck stops on the table of government at various levels, added: “If the government can actually make it a duty to create rehabilitation centres where people can be brought back to their normal selves that will water down or reduce the number of people claiming to have such centres everywhere.”
Parents share in blame
Similarly, the Executive Director of Centre for Media Advocacy for Mother and Child (CAMAC), Mr. Alex Uangbaoje, said: “A huge part of the blame should be put on parents who, instead of taking their children to well certified psychiatric hospitals for proper care, subject them to torture centres under religious cover.
“I even discovered in some of my findings that most of the parents doing this are only trying to do away with the children they are hitherto ashamed of. They would rather push the responsibilities to an Islamic teacher instead of owning up to their failure.”
Mental health
Furthermore, a Psychiatrist Dr David Omeiza attributed the issue to poor state of facilities in psychiatric hospitals, lack of mental health professionals and the stigma associated with patients of mental health.
He said: “Mental illness is becoming a huge problem arising from increasing pressure on our world. It has many variants and includes mild and acute depression which most people have experienced at one time or other.
“In Nigeria as elsewhere in Africa mental illness whatever the cause, is equated to ‘madness’ and nobody wants to associate with a mad person.
“Such ‘mad’ persons exhibit violent behaviours arising from drug abuse or they are believed to be possessed of demons, hence they are taken as in the south, to traditional (herbal) or religious homes where they seek to ‘cure’ them of the madness or exorcise the ‘demons’ in them through excessive beatings.
“As for psychiatric hospitals, they are so very inadequate, professional psychiatrists themselves so very, very few in comparison to our population. And like many things associated with government these have also suffered some neglect over the years due to insufficient funding and attention.
“Yet their services appear to be so very much in demand in today’s world where mankind is becoming increasingly restless, seeking of something which we do not totally comprehend but which we consider to be wealth, fame, leading to an unbridled rat race from which we seek relief in exhaustion through alcohol and narcotics.
“Yet these only offer temporary not permanent relief, resulting to addiction and eventual nervous breakdown.”
Way out
On the way, Dr Oyediran said: “Parents, guardians and relatives should not turn their backs on family members that show signs of mental or psychological imbalance of any kind by abandoning them to the streets, locking them up in a remote corner of the house or sending them to illegal rehabilitation centres.
“These quack centres only heap more psychiatric problems on them with their inhumane treatment. Well funded, equipped and staffed legal rehabilitation centres should be set up in all local government areas.
“Above all government should dig into the root causes of drug abuse and other deviant behaviours in order stamp them out.”
