Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu has for the umpteenth time restated the importance of legalising the cultivation of cannabis for medicinal purposes in Nigeria.
Akeredolu made the statement during a live interview programme tagged ‘Governor Speaks’, which is part of activities lined up in commemoration of his 100 days of his second term in office.
Akeredolu said: “We must find a way to legalise the cultivation of cannabis for medicinal purposes. There is nothing wrong with it. We are only shooting ourselves in the foot. It is a foreign exchange earner for people outside the country. People want this. We ourselves, even our pharmacies want to develop…
“I travelled out of here and I was in Thailand trying to study the cultivation of cannabis for pharmaceutical use. We did all these, we even went there with NDLEA (National Drug Law Enforcement Agency), the chairman at that time went with us, maybe he came and said what he went for was for a different thing but that was why we went and all I felt that let us look at the way they did it over there.
“Everybody has a drug problem, most countries have a drug problem. We are having it here, it is not as pronounced here as in other places but there are ways they went about these things that those who are involved in drugs, those who are selling, those who are exporting had other ways of doing things that they had to leave it. So, when we talk about cultivation, we are saying in which it is a monitored one, in which NDLEA will have an office (near farms).”
