CODEINE: We Believe Government Must Have Thought Through The Ban And Not
Adejuwon Soyinka, Editor, BBCPIDgin Service, is a multiple award-winning journalist. His recent undercover documentary titled, Sweetsweetcodeine, with Ruona Meyer, has instigated discussions at different segments of Nigerian society — from pharmaceutical
What have you been into since you left the services of Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, as his spokesman?
IHAVE always been a journalist. I started practicing journalism in 1999. I have worked with the Tell magazine and other places before being a Senior Special Assistant (media) and Spokesman to Ogun State governor. I spent two years with the governor (2015 - 2017) to join the British Broadcasting Corporation ( BBC) Pidgin Service. Pidginservice entails transmitting all information, including news, to the audience in Pidgin, isn’t it?
Pidgin Service is one of the language services of the BBC and also Pidgin is one of the languages in Nigeria. As you must have been aware of, BBC has been broadcasting news in Hausa language in Nigeria and Africa for about 61 years. At some point, it decided to expand and added Pidgin Service in August 2017. Later this year, it added the Igbo and Yoruba services to its outlets in Nigeria. Pidgin Service, as the name implies, produces content in Pidgin language to serve and cater for Pidgin speakers not just in Nigeria, but also across the West and Central Africa. How acceptable is this service across the West African sub-region, bearing in mind that even Nigeria there are variations of Pidgin language?
The acceptance has been very good across West Africa - Ghana, Nigeria, Western Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and even with Africans in the Diaspora.
Do you have people from Nigeria or other countries in Africa translating the news items in their own variety of Pidgin to make the information accessible to them? For instance, Niger Delta people’s Pidgin is different from that spoken in, say Benue, Lagos, etc?
Pidgin is a novel thing, especially writing it. What we try to do is to harmonise the different ways people spell and write it. In a way, we try to reflect these differences in our reporting. We are barely a year old and still learning. As we move on, we shall be accommodating and encouraging people. The way Ghanaians speak Pidgin is different from the way Sierra Leoneans speak it, but the beauty of it is that we all understand ourselves across board and it is rare to see anybody that would not understand Pidgin English when someone speaks it.
How are you coping the change from standard to Pidgin English language?
I would not say it is difficult; I am a journalist and it is what I am trained to do. I saw it as an opportunity to do something new and also make history. The way it is now, when the history of BBC Pidgin Service would be told in the future, it wouldn’t be complete without mentioning those of us that started it. So, I consider it a privilege. Would it be out of the ordinary to suggest that BBC might use this medium, as a credible platform to codify Pidgin English in future?
Hopefully, we will get to that because the language has been in use for a long time. For us, it is one language that has unified Nigerians regardless of our dialects and culture. And outside Nigeria, it has remained as a barrier-breaking language. It will enable one to identify a citizen of a neighbouring country, but what is lacking is its codification. At the moment, there are no books on it outside the works Ken Saro-wiwa wrote in Pidgin ( Sazoboy, for instance, and Uzodinma Iweala’s Beastsof Nonation among others). There is a need to develop that further and the entrance of a major international media like BBC can always do things better.
What inspired Sweetsweetcodeine documentary?
We suddenly realised that young people, including adults in their 40s, are abusing cough syrup with codeine, endangering their lives and health without knowing it. We also found out that they are abusing it because they get it in large quantity. The question we then asked ourselves was, ‘how were they able to get this drug in large quantities if pharmaceutical stores are to require doctors’ prescriptions before selling?’ So, we knew there was a problem with the supply chain in the pharmaceutical sector and what we later found out even surprised those of us that worked on the project. We did not even expect it to be that deep. We did not even expect those involved in the criminal activities to be there.
Was there no particular event that led to this? How did you know there was an abuse? We were triggered off by the case of a 13-yearold girl that was abusing codeine. It was a big story; so, in course of finding out what led to it, we discovered that there were others involved. There were a lot of young adults, people closer to 40 years and even university students abusing this substance. We also found out that cough syrup with codeine can be bought at nightclubs and bars just like one orders for a drink and also that some people throw parties and serve cough syrup with codeine, as they would serve drinks. Some of these were shocking to me; I never thought things like these existed; so, it became ‘the more we look into it, the more we found something strange.’
At a point, we took the decision of not only finding out those abusing cough syrup, but to find out how they get it and how it gets to them. We also found out that codeine is a very deceptive product in the sense that a lot of people who abuse it believe they have done nothing bad.
There are other drugs being abused on a daily bases? Why did you decide to go for codeine only?
In the course of the project, I met a lot of young people, who are abusing other drugs and those who would take virtually any drug or combination of drugs. These youths believe it is better to take cough syrup with codeine than cocaine; they feel calm doing it because they see it as something smarter and harmless. They see it as a thing that if anybody finds out it would not draw undue attention, especially as some people go to the pharmacy to buy cough syrup with codeine. So, they feel they are doing nothing bad; yet it is damaging them as much as any other hard drug. Facts have it that two states alone consume three million bottles per day. This is alarming; so, all these drew our attention to cough syrup with codeine.
That documentary covers Lagos, Ilorin and Kano only. Don’t you think more than three million bottles are being consumed per day?
We consume 10 times more than that. Really, we have a challenge with statistics in this part of the world. So, nobody knows the exact number of bottles we consume daily. We have the cases of illegal production and licensed companies producing beyond their production quotas, which is not known to the regulatory authorities and this might make it difficult to determine the number of bottles in the market or consumed daily. The three million figure consumed was got from the Senate and, according to them, it is only coming from Kano and Jigawa States combined. We do not know the statistics of the other parts of the country, but we can assure that places like Lagos, with a lot of nightclubs, will be consuming more. Some of the people I met, while doing the story suggested to me to open a bar and use it as a front to sell the drug. They told me that a good number of people are doing it. So, you can tell from this where some of these drugs could be got. Is the price cough syrup with codeine sold in the clubs the same with what is obtainable at the pharmacy?
No; it is higher at the nightclubs because it is a black market. Prices in these clubs go for as much as N3000, while one can get it between N700 and N750 in the pharmacy. So, prices are marked up in the clubs.
Would it not be proper to have a second edition that would answer the plethora of questions raised during the screening, questions like the health factor and others?
There has been a lot of research on the health aspects. It affects multiple organs such as the kidney, lungs and others. The long and short of it is that it damages the human body, make users age faster and act as if they are in trance. I guess the challenge now is for the society to pick up where BBC stopped and build on it.
Would you say the Nigerian justice system is doing enough met out fair punishment on the offenders?
One of the things that have come up after the project is that the leadership of the Senate issued a statement commending BBC for its efforts and also highlighted some of the efforts of the National Assembly to curb the menace. One of the things it can do is to expedite action to curb the menace by passing legislation that would strengthen the existing agencies to make them go after these issues. It feels good to hear that government has banned the production and importation of codeine to Nigeria. In a way, it will reduce the number of people that will have assess to the product, but in a way,