Dear Mr Frank Alim Okpe,
By Paul Ojeka
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Published on August 25, 2026
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9 min read
I write to you in your capacity as the leader of the Yache Youth Forum, not with the intention of diminishing your office or questioning the sincerity of your leadership, but with a deep sense of responsibility to draw attention to an affliction steadily assuming a dangerous dimension among the youths of Yache and which, by the nature of your position, imposes upon you and the organisation you lead a solemn duty to confront with courage, intellectual seriousness and sustained action.
The recent protest by Yache mothers against the rising incidence of drug abuse among our youths ought not to be dismissed as another communal event destined soon for oblivion, for the spectacle presented by those mothers, some advanced in age and others burdened by frailty, mobility difficulties and visual impairment, was far more significant than an ordinary demonstration against narcotic abuse. It was an expression of maternal anguish, a manifestation of communal anxiety and, above all, a solemn appeal to those entrusted with the leadership of the younger generation to recognise the gravity of the danger confronting the children whose future they are expected to safeguard.
I watched with admiration as these mothers, notwithstanding the limitations imposed upon them by age and physical frailty, marched through the streets of Alifokpa, huffing and puffing, lamenting and crying out against the destruction drug abuse is bringing upon their children, while their determination appeared greater than the physical strength with which they were endowed. They marched because the preservation of their children was sufficiently important to demand whatever measure of courage and exertion remained within them.
It is against this backdrop that the absence of the youths and, particularly, the apparent absence of their organised leadership, becomes a matter deserving sober reflection. The principal victims of this scourge are the young people themselves, and the responsibility of resisting an affliction that threatens their intellectual, moral and productive capacity cannot reasonably be transferred to mothers whose children they are attempting to rescue from a danger which the younger generation ought itself to confront.
Mr. Frank Alim Okpe, these observations are not intended as an indictment of your person, but as an appeal to the conscience of your office, because you have been entrusted with a platform through which the aspirations, anxieties and welfare of the Yache youth can be articulated and advanced. Leadership acquires its true significance when circumstances confronting a community demand that those invested with authority should employ their influence, intellectual capacity and organisational strength in the service of the people.
You possess, by virtue of your position, both the brain and the brawn, the intellectual capacity and organisational strength, the authority and influence required to chart a meaningful course against the rising tide of drug abuse in Yache. This is therefore a moment when the Yache Youth Forum must rise to the full measure of the responsibility entrusted to it, not through declarations and resolutions alone, but through a sustained programme of education, mobilisation, prevention and intervention capable of reaching youths whose lives are increasingly exposed to the consequences of substance abuse.
The gravity of the situation demands more than occasional pronouncements whenever its consequences become sufficiently visible to attract public attention, because drug abuse does not emerge in a community as an isolated social phenomenon but grows within circumstances involving family influence, peer pressure, social gatherings, weakening moral restraints, irresponsible recreation, economic hardship, poor supervision and the gradual abandonment of those cultural disciplines through which previous generations regulated the conduct of the young.
Yache is richly endowed with human and natural resources, comprising the six clans of Okani, Alifokpa, Endichui-Aji, Uchu, Wonye and Ijiegu, and predominantly agrarian in character, with its people cultivating yam, pepper, garden eggs, groundnuts, sesame seeds, rice, potatoes, melons, cassava and other crops, while rearing cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and other livestock. The community also possesses mineral resources around its interstate boundaries, many of which remain largely unexplored.
Beyond these material endowments, however, the greatest wealth of Yache resides in its people, whose intellectual, professional, religious, military and administrative accomplishments have established a tradition of excellence that ought to impose upon the present generation a corresponding obligation to preserve and transmit that inheritance. The community has produced professors, medical doctors, legal luminaries, military officers and generals, Bible scholars, Reverend Fathers and Sisters, Bishops, economists, veteran educational administrators, political leaders, commissioners, a senator and distinguished professionals in virtually every sphere of human endeavour. It would therefore constitute a grave historical contradiction if a community that has invested so much in the cultivation of human excellence were to permit its younger generation to be progressively diminished by drug abuse.
The danger confronting Yache is consequently not confined to the consumption of illicit substances, because the deeper danger lies in the gradual weakening of those moral restraints that once guided conduct, encouraged respect for elders, preserved communal discipline and instilled in the young a consciousness of responsibility towards themselves, their families and the wider society. Teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, school dropout, alcohol abuse, disrespect for elders, permissive conduct both online and offline and other manifestations of social disorder must therefore be understood as symptoms of a wider moral and social dislocation requiring sustained communal attention.
It is particularly necessary for the Yache Youth Forum to examine the circumstances under which drug abuse appears to flourish, because burials, New Yam celebrations, Valentine’s Day, Christmas and Easter festivities and end-of-year parties have increasingly become occasions for excessive consumption of alcohol and illicit substances. The reported participation of some post-primary school students in end-of-year gatherings where alcohol and drugs are consumed, sometimes resulting in conduct that compromises their dignity and future in hotels and other places of questionable propriety, ought to concern every parent, teacher, youth leader, traditional institution and responsible member of the community.
The response must therefore be founded upon education and prevention rather than indignation after the damage has been done. The Yache Youth Forum, working with parents, schools, traditional institutions, religious bodies, health authorities, law enforcement agencies and other relevant institutions, possesses the organisational capacity to establish a sustained programme of youth sensitisation, peer education, school outreach, counselling, community dialogue and responsible recreation through which young people can be educated on the physical, psychological, educational, social and moral consequences of substance abuse.
Such a programme would provide the Yache Youth Forum with an opportunity to give a more serious meaning to youth leadership within the community, for the responsibility of youth leadership ought not to be exhausted in meetings, social engagements and anniversary pronouncements when the generation represented by the organisation is confronted by a problem capable of impairing its education, productivity, moral formation and capacity to assume the responsibilities of adulthood.
The recent protest by the mothers should therefore become a matter for serious introspection within the Yache Youth Forum, particularly because those mothers have demonstrated a degree of courage and concern that ought to awaken the conscience of the younger generation. It would be an unfortunate inversion of communal responsibility if mothers, some physically frail and advanced in age, were compelled to carry the burden of confronting a problem whose principal victims and immediate stakeholders are the youths themselves.
Mr. Okpe, the Yache Youth Forum has before it an opportunity to give a more enduring meaning to its existence by taking the lead in the struggle against drug abuse. This requires the exercise of the authority entrusted to its leadership, the mobilisation of the intellectual resources available among the sons and daughters of Yache, the establishment of constructive relations with government agencies and community institutions, and the formulation of practical measures through which the menace may be restrained before it acquires a permanence that will make its eradication increasingly difficult.
The youths must also be encouraged to assume a wider responsibility for the preservation of the community by becoming the eyes and ears of Yache in the dark forest of Lord Lugard’s Wall, reporting suspected invasion, deforestation and other criminal activities to the appropriate authorities and cooperating with law enforcement agencies and responsible community institutions in protecting the land and its natural heritage. The preservation of a community extends beyond protecting its people from drugs to protecting its territory, environment, culture and institutions from every form of destructive intrusion.
I therefore appeal to you, Mr. Frank Alim Okpe, as a youth leader endowed with the intellectual capacity, physical strength, authority and influence necessary for meaningful intervention, to rise to the full measure of the responsibility which your office places upon you and to lead the Yache Youth Forum beyond rhetoric into a sustained and organised campaign against drug abuse, so that the mothers who have cried out in anguish may find in the youth leadership a worthy partner in preserving their children and protecting the future of Yache.
The mothers have already demonstrated that age and physical frailty cannot extinguish the determination of a parent whose children are threatened, and the moral force of their protest ought therefore to serve as an enduring summons to the youths and their leaders to assume their proper place in the struggle, because the future of Yache cannot be secured by lamentation alone, nor can the burden of preserving the younger generation be borne indefinitely by parents whose children are themselves expected to become the custodians of the community.
May the Yache Youth Forum, under your leadership, rise to this responsibility with the seriousness it deserves, mobilise the intellectual and human resources at its disposal, and chart a course by which the rising spate of drug abuse may be arrested before it penetrates more deeply into the moral and social fabric of our community, for the preservation of the youth is ultimately the preservation of Yache itself.
Yours in the service of Yache and the entire humanity.
Paul Ojeka is the CEO, Voice of the Voiceless Media, Calabar, Nigeria.
