Mkpuru mmiri and the Cane Deliverance

MKPURU MMIRI AND THE “CANE DELIVERANCE”

ONWUASOANYA FCC JONES

It was sometime last year that someone made passive reference to Mkpuru Mmiri on my social media post, and I was wondering what it could be. Later, about two after that first mention of it, I started reading some of my friends dismissing posts they don’t agree with as been influenced by Mkpuru Mmiri. But, I still couldn’t wrap my head around what it really is. I had to ask a friend about it then, but him too, wasn’t only poor with what it really is, but hadn’t heard about it before then. Well, it was obvious to me that whatever it is, it is certainly some bad substance, but I couldn’t say if it was higher, badder or harder than the more common narcos. I kept nosing around for information about the thing, but the popularity seemed to have died away on social media until recently.

The closest I came to having an idea of what it looked like was when a friend narrated his experience with a young girlfriend of his who took what appeared like some ice cubes and became more ecstatic than normal. Being the very sensitive and you may say, excessively careful type, my friend sneaked out of the room and deleted the beautiful damsel’s number from his phone, immediately thereafter.

“Guy, to imagine that this is a girl I was already thinking of having something serious with. Man, I couldn’t bear the sight.” He lamented to me. When I tried to urge him to look for the girl and see if he could help her come over the addiction, he told me he doesn’t have such patience. Well, I might not, too.

One of the good things about the aggressive social media sensitization on this obviously killer substance is that a number of us may have got to learn the true nature of it and some parents who might not raise any eyebrows when their children begin to sip too much of ‘ice cubes’ or even smoke it, would now take steps to know if its crystal Meth or real ice cubes.

But, I beg to point out; if you find out, your child, your neighbor’s child or the young boy in your neighborhood takes Meth, don’t flog him or her. Yes, it is too crude, or I may say, anachronistic to flog a young person because he or she is sick. This is not very different from the approaches adopted in the past which never changed anything. It’s like the practice of chaining mentally ill people, flogging them, and putting them through all kinds of inhumane and dehumanizing treatments in a bid to cure them. That’s feckless.

Now, drug addiction of any sorts is a sickness and if we truly care about the youths gripped by that scourge, please, don’t treat them as less humans. If you can’t help them, don’t worsen their situation. Yes, we are told that Meth is a killer, it’s going to destroy our youths, but flogging these youths won’t free them for that addiction, it would rather drag them deeper into it, that’s if you don’t kill them with that flogging.

I am not a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist, or any form of expert in the medical lines. I am not even a counselor, but I know enough to know that showing love to these addicts would do more to save them from the doldrum they are heading to than dehumanizing them. Some of them took to that life of drug abuse because they are frustrated with life, because they somehow believe that the world gates them, that they rather take things that make them forget their troubles than continue to worry and probably get ruined by worries. When you flog them, when you treat them like common criminals, you would be giving them more reasons to care less about life.

What do you do then?

For the youths in a particular community who would give 500 lashes of cane to anyone found to be abusing Meth. Please, that’s too unnecessary. You could use that money you would buy the sticks with to set up a rehab facility for the addicts. Devote that energy you would use to give them these lashes to learning a thing or two about drug addiction, then helping your brothers and sisters, sick with Meth, to gradually withdraw.

Get experts to handle this for you. There could be lots of them, waiting to help, however they can and those with finances could help fund some hospital admission for those of them whose situation demands that.

And if you must vent your anger on anyone, vent it on the dealers. Find out those who sell that dangerous substance, report them to Law Enforcement agents. I don’t subscribe to mob justice of any type, but, if you can’t keep yourself from meting some jungle justice, then, spare the victims, destroy the Meths stocked by the peddlers.

And most fundamentally, let the campaign continue. Thanks to my friend, Ambrose Nwaogwugwu for mentioning me on a post by Maria Ude Nwachi calling on Ohanaeze to do something. Challenge taken.