Mile 2 Youths Mobilise Against Cultism, Social Vices In Lagos
By Sherif Salau
Young people in Mile 2 Estate, Amuwo-Odofin, are taking the fight against drug abuse, cultism and other social vices directly to their community through outreach programmes promoting healthier choices and responsible living.
The mobilisation reflects a growing recognition among Lagos youths that enforcement alone cannot solve the twin challenges of substance abuse and cult-related violence. Across the state, similar efforts have taken root through partnerships involving the Lagos State Security Trust Fund’s Campaign Against Crime, Cultism and Other Vices, the Police Campaign Against Cultism and Other Vices, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, schools, faith groups and community leaders. In Mile 2, the emphasis is local and practical — young people speaking to their peers in language that carries weight because it comes from within the same streets and shared experiences.
Organisers and participants stress prevention over punishment. They talk about the quiet ways recruitment into cult groups begins, the peer pressure that turns curiosity about drugs into dependence, and the long-term damage both do to education, employment prospects and personal safety. The message is consistent: the choices made in adolescence and early adulthood shape the rest of a life, and those choices are easier to protect when young people have accurate information, positive alternatives and adults they can trust.
Community meetings, awareness walks and school engagements form part of the approach. Youths are encouraged to report threats, resist invitations that lead toward danger, and support one another in choosing education, skills and legitimate work over the false belonging that cults and drug circles offer. Parents, teachers and traditional leaders are drawn into the conversation, because the problem rarely stays confined to the young person involved. Families feel the strain; neighbourhoods absorb the insecurity.
Officials and security agencies have repeatedly linked cultism and drug abuse to broader patterns of crime in Lagos. The state’s response has combined arrests and seizures with preventive campaigns that reach tertiary institutions, secondary schools and local government areas. Yet the most durable change, many argue, comes when young people themselves take ownership of the message. When a resident of Mile 2 stands before his or her peers and speaks about the cost of these vices, the words land differently from a distant official pronouncement.
The work is ongoing and imperfect. Social pressures remain strong, economic opportunities uneven, and the lure of quick belonging or temporary escape persistent. Still, the decision by Mile 2 youths to organise against drug abuse, cultism and related vices represents a quiet assertion of agency. It says that the future of the community will not be left solely to the forces that threaten it. It will be shaped, at least in part, by those willing to stand in the gap and insist on a different path.
In a city as large and restless as Lagos, such local mobilisations matter. They turn abstract warnings into lived conversations on the streets where the stakes are highest. For the young people of Mile 2, the campaign is both a defence of their own futures and an investment in the safety and dignity of the place they call home.
