Becky Uba Umenyili
The Nigeria Police, Ogun State Command, have called on academic institutions, civil society organisations, parents and community leaders to join hands in guiding young people towards productive, vice-free lifestyles.
Delivering a paper titled “Substance Abuse and National Insecurity: Building Responsible Youth Through Entrepreneurship” at the 8th Set Academic Seminar of the Mass Communication Department, Al-Hikmah University (Abeokuta Study
Centre), the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Oluseyi Babaseyi, noted the direct link between drug abuse and rising violent crime.
He stated that in line with intelligence-led and community-driven policing, the Ogun State Commissioner of Police, Bode Ojajuni, has intensified its non-kinetic crime prevention frameworks through targeted youth outreach and multi-agency advocacy.
At the event which brought together lecturers, undergraduate students from Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), and other tertiary institutions across the state, Babaseyi highlighted two major public sensitization engagements carried out by the Command, aimed at steering youths away from cultism, substance abuse, cybercrime, and associated social vices.
These, he said, include the Ogun State Chapter of the Police Campaign Against Cultism and Other Vices (POCACOV) which conducts interactive sensitization sessions on self-discipline, personal leadership, dangers of gang involvement andother social vices as well as Peace Club Abeokuta (affiliated with the World Peace
Initiative Foundation), which advocates against moral decadency in youth and substance abuse, a misconduct he observes as one that acts as a primary catalyst for violent crimes including cultism, armed robbery and cybercrime.
He urged students to adopt entrepreneurship as both an economic tool and a security strategy, while highlighting the vital role of media practitioners in shaping responsible public discourse for preventive youth-centric crime.