Descriptive national survey of substance use in Nigeria

Introduction:

There were no epidemiological data on alcohol and drug use in Nigeria, prior to the Second World War. In the 1940’s, the abuse of drugs, such as amphetamine, phenobarbitone, pethidine, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) and Cannabis were reported. In the 1960s, isolated reports of drug abuse problems, were also reported by the few psychiatric hospitals at that time . Subsequently, sporadic community surveys, such as the pioneering effort of Odejide, who surveyed a rural community in Western Nigeria, emerged. This was followed in 1988, by the International Council on Alcohol and Addictions’ (ICAA) study in the urban and rural communities of five university towns in three, of the current six geopolitical zones.

 It took another decade before the (1998) UNDCP-funded, multi-city; rapid situation analysis of drug problems in Nigeria was conducted. This study was carried out in four geographically representative states. The study was followed closely by the (1999) Rapid situation assessment of drug abuse in Nigeria, also by the UNDCP, in which 19,550 community samples from twenty-two of the thirty-six states of the country were interviewed. 

In 2002 - 2003 there was a household community survey on drug use among 6,752 participants in 21 states of Nigeria that covered 5 of the current 6 geopolitical zones.

These studies had some limitations. Though the ICAAstudy analysed data from multiple sources in five states, the actual community survey was conducted in only two states. The (1999) UNDCP, Rapid Situation Assessment study did not have defined criteria for urbanrural classification of communities surveyed. The more inclusive, large sample size study in 2002 – 2003 did not evaluate the possible ruralurban differences of drug use.