In an intensified effort to curb rampant substance abuse among young people, multiple award-winning journalist Mr. Ngamegbulam Chidozie Stephen has shifted his media campaign to school grounds. His latest stop: Bolgatanga Senior High School (BIGBOSS), where he engaged students on the dire dangers and shattered futures linked to drugs and alcohol. His journey to this podium had begun not in a newsroom, but in the shadows. It had started with a camera lens pointed into places most avert their eyes from: the ghettos. His recent documentary, bearing the grim title “Swallowed by Drugs,” was not just a piece of work; it was a testament to a deepening nightmare. The footage he captured in various ghettos was a brutal, unvarnished portrait of a generation in peril. Young men and women, some barely older than the students now before him, lost in a haze of illicit smoke and cheap alcohol, their eyes hollow, their potential leaching away into the dirt floors of derelict shacks. Watch the full documentary: He had spoken to them, these ghosts of what could have been. Their stories were a broken record of tragedy. “I started in school,” one whispered, his voice thin as paper. “My friends said it would make me feel good, make me forget my problems.” Another, shivering slightly, confessed, “It is part of me now. I cannot stop. My family, they don’t know me anymore.” Many had abandoned their education, their homes, their very identities, seduced and then enslaved by substances that promised escape but delivered only a cage. These were not faceless statistics to Ngamegbulam. They were individuals whose dreams had names: the boy who wanted to be an engineer, the girl who once aced her science exams, the aspiring footballer with lightning in his feet. Their dreams, as he would soon tell the listening students, were now “shaky.” A gentle word for a brutal truth: they were dying. Witnessing this collapse firsthand had transformed Ngamegbulam’s role from documentarian to crusader. If he could expose the problem, he reasoned, he must also try to stem the tide. And so, he had intensified his media campaign, turning his focus upstream, to the schools, to the places where the slide often begins, to the students still perched on the precipice of choice. BIGBOSS was one such stop. “If you care to know,” his voice, calm yet urgent, broke the hall’s quiet. “If you care to know, over 400 million people live with the use of alcohol disorder. Yearly, 3 million people die as a result.” He let the global scale of the tragedy hang in the air before bringing it home, sharply, painfully local. “In Ghana, over 50,000 people find themselves in this abuse. Out of that 50,000, 35,000 are students. Just like you. Thirty-five thousand.” A subtle ripple went through the crowd. The number was no longer an abstract global figure; it was a potential classmate, a friend on the next bench, a reflection in the mirror. The remaining thousands, he noted, were “our mothers and our fathers.” But the youth, the JHS and SHS students, bore the brunt. “That means these people we are talking about,” he continued, leaning into the mic, “their dream of becoming that doctor is shaky. Their dream of becoming a nurse is shaky.” He spoke not with the fire of condemnation, but with the empathy of a witness and the clarity of a guide. He dismantled the false allure of alcohol and drugs brick by brick. It was not just a health issue, he explained; it was a future-annihilator. “Through studies, now and then, it’s just a way to improve yourself. It’s a way to help your family, your society, and your country. But when you engage yourself in alcohol, you will see that those dreams will never come true.” Then, he pivoted to aspiration. He gestured beyond the school walls, towards the seats of power and influence. “You admire those in Parliament. Our MPs. You love what they do, don’t you? And you want to be like them, don’t you?” Heads nodded, almost imperceptibly. “So, how do you think you will be like those people when you engage in drinking alcohol and taking drugs? You cannot be like them.” His alternative was simple, powerful, and rooted in self-interest. “The only way we can be like them is by shying away from alcohol and drug abuse. That is the only way you can represent your community in Parliament. That is the way you can be the Speaker. That is the way you can become a minister. That is the way you can also become a president.” He was not there to lecture, he insisted. He was a messenger, delivering a warning they must carry within themselves. “I am here to actually pass this message to you so that as you are going about your duties… You should know that drug and alcohol abuse is one thing that can actually deny you your dream.” His plea became personal, communal. He asked them to remember this gathering when they returned to their homes and communities, where social gatherings often orbit around “drinks and some other goodies.” He pointed to the worrying trend in the region: “Sports [drinking spots] are becoming the order of the day… The more people patronize all these drinking spots, the more people are going to waste every day.” Then, he gave them a charge, a title to wear with pride. “I want you to be an ambassador in your community. An ambassador in your constituency. You should be in that position of also advising members of your community… because it will never help the society to grow.” He concluded with a humility that resonated deeply. He respected their time, their studies, and their busy lives. But he needed one thing from them before he left. A collective declaration. A line in the sand. “Please, you have to say, ‘Say no to drug and alcohol abuse.’ I want you to say that.” For a heartbeat, there
Mr. Ngamegbulam Chidozie Stephen educating students of BIGBOSS on dangers of drugs and alcohol abuse
