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It has become increasingly apparent that one's perception of issues depends largely on his or her personal history. Human beings, professionals, and stakeholders vary in their perspectives, strategies, and solutions. Rather than arbitrarily selecting issues or seeking consensus among interdisciplinary but disparate groups, it is critical to examine the broader array of values and issues that impact learners with exceptionalities and the future of special education. In addition, it is important to conceptualize effective techniques to reverse traditional problems or difficulties while considering the “cycles” of change in general and special education. These cycles are based on the view that educational perspectives have their time since they come and go. When they are innovative, they become the status quo and become finally obsolete as the next group of methods, beliefs, and educational initiatives takes hold. In special education, we have fundamental values that must be respected and followed to deliver services to learners with exceptionalities. These values are sometimes not valued by ill prepared and unprepared professionals, especially since good professionals believe in change. This chapter focuses on how these values can be respected to protect and advance special education and education as a whole.

The purpose of this study is to examine the politics, political economy, and fallout of hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria. Hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drug in Nigeria, such as opioid analgesics, is a very complex and multifaceted one, which usually involves the interplay of many factors and parties.

Policy manuals, official government gazettes (legislations, regulations, Acts and decrees), academic literature and a direct ethnographic observation of events surrounding the regulation of prescription drugs were reviewed and engaged.

The results revealed that Nigerian and global political economy and politics interface to define the direction of the new restrictive opioid policy, with resultant friction between prohibition and consumption. The reviews showed that the overarching “get-tough” and “repressive” policy are not necessarily founded on empirical evidence of an increase in prescription drug sales or use, but more as a product of the interplay of both internal and external politics and the prevailing socioeconomic order.

Instead of borrowing extensively from or being influenced by repressive Western drug laws and perspectives, Nigerian policymakers on prescription opioids should take control of the process by drawing up a home-grown policy that is less intrusive and punitive in nature for better outcomes. A mental sea change is required to understand the intrigues of Western power in Nigeria’s politics and political economy to avoid the continuous symptomatic failure of drug policy.

The politics and economic influence of the United Nations, USA and Western powers, as well as the axiom of moral panic of prescription drugs scares within the Nigerian environment, are particularly significant in the making of the emerging hawkish policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria.