This morning, I was involved in an outreach to the School for the Gifted in an outskirt community in Abuja called Gwagwalada. It was most fascinating to finally be in a school for the gifted. I have learnt in Psychology classes about gifted children and the imperative to provide special education for both the gifted and physically challenged children, but I have never been to one of such schools, so being in this school was a very critical exposure to me.
Schoolnet: As we highlighted from the Bus that took us to Ggagwalada, the first thing that caught my attention was the schoolnet sign post. I walked-up to the designated block and saw that lots of computers were in the room but it was under lock and keys. Whatever the situation is, at least this school has computers that students can use to improve their IT skills. I first heard about schoolnet in 2003 at a UNESCO Forum in Kaduna and had included it in my presentations at various forums, including a paper I contributed to the UN ICT Taskforce meeting held in Dublin, Ireland in April 2005. As I could see, this particular schoolnet centre is supported by Multi-choice. This is a classical example of how the private sector should support Nigeria’s educational development processes. I am wondering whatever has happened to the- adopt-a -school programme initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education recently. However, learning from this schoolnet project could facilitate the opportunities available to support educational development efforts.
I am a strong IT enthusiast, and I have always used IT as a tool to advance my work. In 2003, I worked through an online forum to mobilize young people from over 100 countries to work together to promote the youth profile at the XV International AIDS Conference held in Thailand the year after. During the same year, I had been involved in a seminar to mobilize computers for the Rivers State College of Education, where I was a student and to raise awareness on ICT among the students and staff. In 2004, I developed and launched the first ever IT Counseling platform (known to me), which assists people with special needs that they are not able to share with a counselor in real life, find solutions to such problems. I believe in the potentials that ICT provides for young people in a society like ours, so it was quite exciting to see an ICT facility like the school for the gifted!
The reason for this outreach was to educate the young students on the effects of drug abuse and its remedy. What is drug abuse? It is the practice of taking drugs outside prescription of a medical professional. The guest speaker who represented the area commander of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency identified 4 causes of drug abuse: Peer pressure, Hero worship, self medication and experimentation. He identified alcohol as the gateway to drug abuse. He also noted that addiction begins with a first time, then a progression resulting to the adaptation to alcohol, the individual becomes addicted and the dependent. According to him, Dugs are classified in two: stimulants and depressants.
He indicated that he had treated over 40 cases of drug dependent people, out of which he singled out two cases of alcoholics who despite the rehabilitative efforts of his agency could not recover. I quickly put this down. He had been using derogatory terms throughout his presentation on drug dependent people, which indicates some prejudice. Is this why his methods did not work? I have learnt of behavior modification theories in school which shows that you can undertake a number of therapeutic methods to assist drug dependent people and many of these are effective. So why is the NDLEA’s specialist not able to assist these drug dependent people?
I had recently made a post on this blog site on concentrated HIV epidemics and morality, bringing attention to the challenges with concentrated epidemics and what implications they can have in terms of intervention that focus on clean needle exchange. If Heroin is illegal in countries, how can the various advocacy efforts be justified that these same countries should provide needles to offenders in order to help protect them from HIV? How can governments assist their citizens who are intravenous drug users without compromising their own National laws. I know that this was a huge issue in Thailand and Prime Minister Thanksin was embarrassed by his own people, through strong protests, during the International AIDS Conference in 2004, where I myself was invited as a speaker.
The speaker also brought our attention to a drug called Crystal Meth, which hyper-accelerates to rate of growth of the body cells, such that it can change an individuals physically look by 50 years ahead of their present age. Unlike other types of drugs, crystal meth is highly addictive.
According to the Narconon Website “a user is much likely to become addicted simply after one use; putting his own health in peril and continually resorting to dealers for more.”