Regional News of Tuesday, 10 March 2015

Source: Daily Guide

Tamale girls in marijuana contest

The increasing spate of indiscipline among the youth, especially girls within the Tamale metropolis, is gradually inching closer to its apex, creating doubt about the ability of parents to instill discipline in their wards at home.

What is more worrying is the open display of acts of indiscipline by sections of the youth who record and share them on various social media platforms, undermining the integrity of the metropolis as a Muslim dominated metropolis.

Copies of disturbing videos sighted by Daily Guide in the last couple of weeks revealed that girls in their early 20s engage in smoking contests. The videos show the girls smoking wrapped substances suspected to be Indian hemp and openly boasting about it.

In one of the videos, a girl who identified herself as Survivor is seen puffing thick smoke from her nostrils after puffing at a lighted wrap of weed and raining insults on a certain Cash One, accusing him of indulging in Sakawa.

At the concluding part of the video, she is joined by a colleague only known as Hamida, who claims she has been smoking since 1992 and warns the said Cash One to shut up or incur their wrath.

Another video which is being circulated on various social media platforms by another duo known as the Ebola Girls shows the duo boasting about their ability to smoke weed unceasingly and daring the police to hunt them down.

The lead culprit in the video, who calls herself Hajia for Real, and her accomplice, Awula aka Viva for Real, justify their decision to engage in prostitution and urge their colleagues to smoke the weed but endeavour to eat well.

According to them, they have seen the benefits of smoking weed and eating properly, rubbishing rumours about its ability to cause any ailment.

Directing their anger at a man they failed to name, the duo claimed he was not their match and should not think he was the only one within the metropolis who could “blaze in weed” above them.

The situation is however not entirely different from what their male counterparts have put out on social media in recent times castigating the girls for being cheap and allowing some poor boys within the metropolis to date them.

Most of them, believed to be engaged in cyber fraud popularly called Sakawa, make an open show of their wealth in some of the videos amidst smoking wraps of dried leaves.

They also boast that no one can stop them unless they are being chased by police patrol team, who they claim would also be unable to locate them.

One of them is quoted as saying that since their parents had shirked their responsibilities, no one had authority over them, insisting that they would “blaze” until the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Checks by Daily Guide revealed that most of them are pupils and students who are abandoning school for cyber fraud which is reportedly gaining notoriety in the region.

Primary school children, some about 14 years old, have abandoned school to engage in cyber fraud, making internet cafes common grounds to spot pupils in school uniforms during school hours.

A number of prominent religious and opinion leaders have criticised the conduct of the girls who are now into smoking, and have warned that the situation, if not curtailed, could spell doom for the metropolis.

The Northern Regional Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), ASP Ebenezer Tetteh, hinted that the regional police command may soon embark on an operation to clamp down on some of these illicit drug sale outlets.