NDLEA Abia Command runs one of Nigeria's largest rehabilitation centres, Commander Chilee Chigbu told the National Directorate of Employment state coordinator, Mrs Nwachukwu Tessy, during a courtesy visit in Umuahia. Chigbu said the facility handles recovery for people battling substance abuse but warned that "rehabilitation alone is not enough without proper reintegration." She asked NDE to open skill-acquisition classes inside the centre and to reserve job slots for graduates once they finish treatment, arguing that steady work is the surest shield against relapse.
Tessy replied that NDE keeps certified trainers in all 17 local government areas and can teach more than 80 vocations, from barbing to solar-panel installation. She pledged to fold the rehabilitated clients into existing programmes and to fast-track their enrolment.
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NDLEA Abia's Chilee Chigbu has quietly built the country's biggest addiction-recovery warehouse, yet she still has to beg the jobs agency for sewing machines and welding booths. That tells you every layer of government still treats rehab as charity, not economic policy.
The subtext is brutal: Abuja pumps billions into "war on drugs" seizures, but leaves ex-users to scramble for livelihoods. When an agency head must personally lobby for skills workshops, it exposes how thin the post-treatment safety net really is.
For the 200-odd clients inside the centre, the difference between staying clean and returning to tramadol hubs in Aba may boil down to whether NDE actually releases starter packs or treats the pledge as another press-release promise.
This is the same vacuum that pushes recovered users back to slum kingpins who pay daily wages as touts. Until the state mainstreams reintegration funds, NDLEA's flagship centre will keep graduating reformed addicts straight back into the same economy that broke them.
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