Weeks after the gruesome murder of some the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA officials in Kogi State, some officers have been talking and baring their minds on the seeming neglect, underfunding and ill-equipping of the agency. They lament risks to their lives and exposure to corruption to Gboyega Alaka
Nearly four weeks after the shock attack and killing of three National Drug Law Enforcement Agency’s (NDLEA) operatives in Okene, Kogi State, no arrests seems to have been made; at least none that is known to the public.
The officers, Onwumere Nicholas, Peter Ebun and Abdulrahaman Musa, were said to have been attacked around 8.30pm and two rifles seized from them, while on patrol along with three others at one of their posts around the main gate of the Federal College of Education (FCE), Okene.
Even as the state (Kogi) commandant pledged its units commitment to partner other sister security agents to arrest and bring the perpetrators to book, nothing concrete has emerged. This again brings to the fore the risk and danger of the job; but it also calls to question the quality of arms and equipment at the officers’ disposal and the nature of backup available to them in the line of duty. Were the officers that escaped unhurt equipped with quality arms to take on the assailants after their colleagues were felled? Did they have communication gadgets to radio for backup? And were there operations vehicles on ground to go after such daring assailants?
Tunde Ipinmisho, a relative of Peter Ebun, one of the deceased, was quoted to have blamed the death of the officers on the pervading insecurity in Kogi State. He literally fingered the unpreparedness of the present governor of the state, when he wrote: “There is no government in place that could genuinely be called by that name… (in the state)” and when he said, “When you put the unprepared in power, the fabric of the state suffers abysmal decay.”
But is the death all about the insecurity in Kogi State? Some officers of the agency, who spoke on condition of anonymity, think not.
Died in vain?
Except something dramatic happens, the answer to the above poser may well be in the affirmative – unfortunately so. Going by antecedents of such killings and attacks on NDLEA officers in the past, the recent incident may just end up as additional indices to the data of men who have ‘died in active service to the agency.’
According to a source within the agency who has put in about two decades and has served across a number of state and special commands, the death of the Kogi six would not be the first time officers of the NDLEA would be getting killed on duty. Far back 2004, the source, who prefers to be addressed as Officer Chukwu (not real name), said six NDLEA officers were attacked and killed in Kabo Local Government Area of Kano State. The officers were said to have been mobbed and killed, when a drug baron they had gone to arrest, raised an alarm that they were robbers and area boys descended on them. Thereafter, the police made some arrests, but they were later released and the incident died a natural death.
In 1999, the same fate befell a lady area commander in Delta State. She was gruesomely murdered and until date, no one has been arraigned or brought to book over of her death.
The same thing, Officer Chukwu said, happened to another officer in Zamfara State not too long ago. Thankfully, he survived the mob attack, but his assailants still walk freely. “Who says they cannot come back to finish where they left off?” He asked.
Officer Chukwu was soon joined in this discussion by another officer attached to the Lagos command, who, after taking in the line of discussion and encouraged by Officer Chukwu, said, “Really, mob attack is one major thing we get exposed to almost on a regular basis. But that is because we are ill-equipped logistic-wise and ammunition-wise. How often do you hear that police officers or soldiers get mobbed, let alone killed while on patrol or on a mission to arrest? It is unheard of; but that is what we face. Usually you go and arrest these people, and because they have a lot of (drug) money, which has turned them into big philanthropists in their communities, the people are always ready to fight off the agency officials, who usually are with little or no ammunition. Can you imagine the embarrassment of beating a retreat while on a mission to arrest a baron because of some mob resistance? It is unheard of in other climes, and it calls to question the seriousness of the Nigerian government in its so-called anti-drug war.”
Said Officer Chukwu, who currently serves at the MMA (Murtala Muhammed Airport) Command in Lagos: “Many of our officers have been mobbed and killed unsung. We are only talking about the three Kogi Command officers because it made the headlines. What about those who have been killed in covert operations and the news never leaked to the press?”
He is actually of the view that the three may have been targeted because they were the only ones carrying arms. “The assailants knew that once they gunned down the armed officers, the others were likely to take to their heels, which was what actually happened. So they (the assailants) could have been drug suspects; but they could also have been Boko Haram men or Fulani herdsmen or even criminals in need of ammunitions. Besides, we carry obsolete guns, which most times cannot withstand the assailants’ fire power. Don’t forget, we are mostly dealing with drug barons, who have loads of money.” He stressed that this would not have happened if all the officers had arms and if there were ready back-up teams to go after the assailants.
The risks, the temptations
This inevitably steered the conversation towards the issue of patrol vehicles and official cars.
“Can you believe that the agency has not received any vehicle since 1999?” The second officer said. “If you see any command with vehicles, rest assured that such vehicle or vehicles must have been donated by the state government of the command. Let me shock you more, can you believe that a state commander does not have an official car? Usually, it is the same vehicle donated by the state governors that they use as official cars to come to the office, to go on patrol, and to go back home at the close of work. As I speak with you, only the chairman, DG and directors have vehicles. And the last time the directors got vehicles was seven years ago.
“Meanwhile, we should be entitled to official cars from the position of commander or even assistant commander, just like it is in the police.”
When asked if they had access to car loans like the government has done with other military and paramilitary agencies, the second officer, who for this purpose shall be referred to as Officer James said, “No. Even when they were giving Peugeot 206, 307 to officers in other sister agencies like the Customs, Immigration Service and the State Security Service (SSS), they never extended it to the NDLEA staff. I believe it is a sign of neglect and I sometimes wonder why we still work as hard as we do.”
Painting a picture of the implications of their lack of official and personal vehicles, Officer James said, “Can you imagine a situation where you’re going on the street and some drug trafficker you had once arrested and pursued his prosecution, walks up to you and greets you, ‘Oga, you no remember me? Na me be the man wey you arrest for drug trafficking at the airport last month now.’ Now imagine if that person was coming with a mind to avenge what you did to him; wouldn’t you be easy prey? That has happened to me a couple of times. And I know of a colleague who once boarded a bus with a drug trafficker he once arrested. Frankly, you don’t want to be in our shoes, because these are people we’ve denied chances of making millions of dollars; people, who, but for our poor justice system, should have been sent to jail for a minimum of 15 years!”
Officer James laments that the fact that the law is not applied to the letter is one of the reasons for this uncomfortable experiences. “Normally, the minimum sentence for anyone found guilty is 15 and a maximum of 25, but what do we have? A situation where suspects caught with huge kilogrammes of hard drugs are released on bail indiscriminately to walk freely in society, where cases are adjourned endlessly and judges give as little as two years, and three months sentences to convicts. This inevitably puts us at risk because a convict you effected his arrest and rejected his bribe offers, is soon on the street, free.”
Sometimes, he said, they even get away with fines and backdated sentences, which sometimes means automatic releases. “So we do our work and they buy their way free.”
The officers however believes the reason most of them don’t get attacked during such public meetings, when they are clearly vulnerable, is “because we treat them well, and because we make them understand that we’re only doing our job.”
But many of them argue that the poor funding and deprivation is a major temptation towards corruption. They argue that if the government is serious about its anti-corruption war, it should do more to make its staff comfortable.
One officer said, “We are dealing with people who have millions of naira to play with and often dangle it. But it is noteworthy that officers of the agency have largely remained steadfast and incorruptible. As it is, the NDLEA remains the least corrupt government agency, but with all these temptations and exposure, you really cannot tell how much longer the majority of the officers can hold out.”
The Nation gathered that it was as a result of the uncompromising stance of the officers that the drug traffickers and their barons have started conniving with other airport workers, such as NAHCO, SAHCOL and FAAN, to smuggle their contraband luggage to the tarmac.
“Recently, we uncovered two cases, one involving NAHCO (National Aviation Handling Company) officials and FAAN officials, where six officials were involved in the smuggling of luggage containing 23kilogrammes of hard drugs to the tarmac. On the other occasion involving SAHCOL (Skyway Aviation Handling Company Limited) officials, 25kilogrammes were seized. That should tell you the level of work we are doing, but the government should make our work easier by making sure the welfare of staff and equipment and ammunition are taken care of.”
So much at stake
To underline the level of risk, Officer James revealed that 1kg of cocaine in the Nigerian market is worth N17m. When taken out of the country to the United Kingdom or the United States, he said it is worth five times that price (N17mX5). “So when you arrest a trafficker with say 5kg, you are denying him/her and the baron that much money. Now anyone could kill for that,” he said gasping for breath.
“But it’s even higher when they manage to smuggle it to Japan or any of the Asian countries. Let me shock you again; in Japan, 1kg of cocaine is a whopping $150,000. Check that out. And that’s because those are highly controlled societies and the penalty is death. So if you are able to get the drugs in there, you’re super-made. And when they make this money, they launder it by buying goods, which they now bring into the country. That is where the money laundering part of our job comes in, because you really cannot divorce drug trafficking from money laundering. ”
More annoying, Officer Chukwu lamented, is the fact that “they don’t pay tax and the kind of money they bring into the country destabilises the economy.”
Functions of the NDLEA
The NDLEA, for the records, was set up to enforce the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency Act, which includes, “the cultivation, processing, sale, trafficking and use of hard drugs, and to empower the Agency to investigate persons suspected to have dealings in drugs and other related matter. (1989 No. 48, 1990 No 30, 1992, No 15, 1995, No 3, 1999, No. 62).
For the benefit of the layman, Officer Chukwu said the agency’s functions can be broadly divided into three: drug demand reduction, drug supply suppression, and prosecution. The money laundering part inevitably comes in as a result of the section of the act, which empowers it to adopt “measures to identify, trace, freeze, confiscate or seize proceeds derived from drug-related offences or property whose value corresponds to such proceeds” (No 3, subsection C).
“In supply suppression,” Officer Chukwu said, “you need money, you need resources. Incidentally, you’re dealing with criminals, who have resources even more than the government itself. To suppress supply, we have to work proactively through information gathering, use of informants, and through arrests. Even when you receive information, you need to confirm it; you need money to do surveillance, vehicles and several other things. Sometimes, you need to keep a suspect, prosecute them… All these cost money. Already, we have talked about lack of vehicles, but you would be shocked at the amount each command gets as monthly allocation to pursue all these functions.”
According to another source, each command of the agency gets only N120,000 monthly allocations to perform all the aforementioned functions and more under the 2017 budget. A breakdown of the functions as listed in the NDLEA Act numbers about 18 (Letters a-r), and this is aside a further breakdown of individual functions. With about 140 staff operatives, using the MMA command as a case study, the big question is how much does that boils down to per officer? And how much can they possibly do with that.
Said the source, “the government currently uses the envelop system. The NDLEA is an agency under the Ministry of Justice and it only gets its subventions directly from whatever is allocated to the ministry. The NDLEA’s entire budget for the entire 2017 was N120million and this is to be shared amongst the 36 state commands, the FCT, the five international airports, the Apapa, Tin-can ports, Seme border, Idiroko border, and Onne in Port Harcourt. In 2016, it got N95million, while in 2015, it got N100million.”
Asked how the Ministry of Justice expects the agency to carry out its massive and risky functions in a whole year with such miserly allocations, the source said it might be the ministry officials’ way of getting back at the agency, whose consolidated COMPASS salary scale is higher than the regular ministry staff salaries.
The Nation also learnt that the current Chairman, Chief Executive of the agency, Col. Muhammad Mustapha Abdalla, made efforts to have the agency moved from the Justice Ministry to the Presidency for smoother operations, but the move was frustrated by the Senate, who cited executive interference in the operations of the agency.
No equipment
Said Officer Chukwu, “The whole scenario is such that most of us just do the bit we do to justify the salary we earn. Do you even know that the government does not supply the command with basic kits like scanners? The one we currently use at the airport was donated by our foreign partners, the US government. And this is because they realise that if they don’t give us, the drugs get into their countries and expose their young people to addictive lives. We would have had two, but the other, which was also donated by the US government, got burnt. The lone scanners in Abuja and Kano were also donations, while Port Harcourt, Enugu and Kaduna cannot boast of a single scanner. Now, isn’t that free passage for anyone smuggling drugs or any other banned substance through these routes.”
Understaffing, overworking
Aside the afore-mentioned, our investigations also revealed that the agency also suffers from sundry welfare issues, such as under-staffing, overworking and inadequate office space. To start with, the agency can only boast of about 5,000 operatives nationwide, with some state commands like Yobe and Bayelsa getting as little as 30 staff each. While the argument may be that these are landlocked states, the fact remains that all states of the federation have the problem of cannabis cultivation and trafficking. The question of how to distribute such marginal number of staff to effectively cover a whole state cannot be wished away.
Most of the agency staff spoken to in the course of this investigation also revealed that they are well-overworked. While the international labour laws recommend eight hours as standard work duration per day, most NDLEA officers across the country, it was learnt, work 12 hours, seven days a week.
One source said, “More than 50% of the commands are doing two shifts of 12 hours per day. We only get 24 hours rest every two weeks, which is killing. So instead of working 40 hours a week, we’re putting in 84 hours. And 80 per cent of us are living far from our families, so how do we spend time with them?
“There is also the problem of inadequate office accommodation, furniture and other necessary office equipments. As we speak, very few state commands have good, conducive offices. Most of the officers at the airports and seaports just resume and hang around the port premises.
The agency, due to its grossly inadequate allocations, is also not able to pursue one of its cardinal mandates, which is drug demand reduction, an assignment it can only judiciously execute if it has funds to prosecute and propagate its anti-drug campaigns. “We cannot hold public enlightenment programmes in schools, communities and in the media to sensitise people on the dangers of getting caught up in the drug web. And because we’re failing in this respect, many young people have been caught by the allure of hard drugs and the temporary feeling it gives, forgetting that the end result can be really weighty.”
Officer James would therefore not divorce the rise in the spate of violence across the country from access to hard drugs. “Those who are perpetrating violence and other unlawful acts are not doing it in their normal state of mind. And don’t forget that drug money also destabilises the economy. So these things are intertwined and they have ripple effects.”
Besides, the source said there is no single federal government rehabilitation centre in the country. The NGOs and churches are trying in this respect, but the government has to wake up to its role.
National Drug Control master Plan. Dead on Arrival?
One of the officers also spoke on the National Drug Control Master, which he said maps out a strategic five-year plan on how the agency can combat the rising drug menace. The plan, to be implemented between 2015 and 2019 ‘aims to strengthen responses to drugs in order to contribute to the enhanced health, security and well-being of all Nigerians.’ He however laments that two years its duration, not much is being done to implement.
Brickwall
Efforts by the nation to get an official response on some of these allegations from the NDLEA management proved abortive. When this reporter put a call through to the agency’s Principal Staff Officer, Public Affairs, Asst. Comm. Jonah Achema, he begged for time promising to get back, but he never did. Subsequent attempts to reach him met a brickwall. Even a text message spelling out the request was literally spurned, as he sent a message back that he was in a meeting, but never got back.
