Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has insisted that all candidates vying for various offices in the forthcoming general elections should be tested for drugs.
The rights group, in a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday, said it has become important for Nigerians to know the mental health of those they want to elect.
Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, who addressed the press in Abuja on Wednesday, said that someone in their right senses will not have the courage to siphon billions of dollars from the country’s coffers to himself except motivated and pushed by drugs.
He warned that the political scene would become a soft target for these drug barons who are being chased around and captured by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA because they need to have a place where they feel they can influence the policies of the government.
“If you have an office holder who is working optimally, those who are such businesses would no longer find it very comfortable and will now begin to look for other areas where they retire to, where they can not be arrested,” he said.
“They need to have a place where they feel they can influence the policies of the government and the only way you can influence policies of the government is to capture power.
“So it is possible that those drug barons who have been rendered jobless right now will try to capture power at any level by sponsoring governors, Senators and even sponsoring themselves to become Senators.
“If you have a system in place where you are putting so much fire on them, they’ll look for other avenues that are quite soft. And the softest avenue for drug barons is politics. Because politics is all about money. It’s all about violence. If you use violence, the most notorious violence entrepreneurs in the past have always won elections.
“They’ve always bribed the Supreme Court or Tribunals to win elections. So drug barons will always try to hijack the electoral process. And it’s important that Nigerians are aware of this. And the Governor of Anambra State said that drug barons are retiring into politics and that NDLEA should carry out drug tests on aspirants ahead of the 2023 elections.
“And people are kicking against it, saying it’s not in the Constitution. Is everything in the Constitution? We must test people who we want to elect into offices because you can’t tell me that someone who is normal will get into office and steal N119 billion to himself alone.
“So it would take someone whose brain has been destroyed by drugs to summon the courage to corner the entire resources of the State to himself.”