Day NDLEA DG took drug war to Rotarians

 Emeka Ibemere

It was on August 14, 2013 at the Boat Club along Awolowo Road Ikoyi, Lagos and the event was the Business Meeting of the Lagos Rotary Club of Nigeria. The Director General of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Mr. Femi Ajayi was the guest speaker. Present at the meeting were President of the club Gbolahan Ayodele, immediate past President Hairat Balogun and other senior members of the Lagos Rotary Club, Lagos State.

As he mounts the podium to deliver his key note speech, the Rotarians expectation on that afternoon lecture was one but high because the speaker is a versatile lecturer, especially when it comes to fighting the drug war.

And he did not disappoint his audience.

 Reading his prepared speech, Ajayi called on the Rotarians to support and partner with the NDLEA in the fight against illicit drug trafficking and abuse.

The DG of the Agency is of the view that with the influence of business tycoons and philanthropists, including opinion moulders and decision makers in the Rotary, they could help in the fight against illicit drugs in country. 

According to Femi, the Agency needs the support of all the stakeholders in the country in carrying out its crucial mandate of both drug supply and demand reduction.

In his Paper entitled: The Role of National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in National Security and Sustainable Development, the Director General said that it is unrealistic for Nigerians, both the government and the governed to expect the NDLEA to remain functional and effective in coping with ever increasing drug control challenges without the assistance of highly influential business men, women, politicians, Reverend, pastors, philanthropists, opinion moulders in Rotary club.

“Drug control is a collective humongous task that cannot be handled by the NDLEA alone. It is a shared responsibility that requires stakeholders to partner actively with the Agency by becoming advocates, goodwill ambassadors and champions of the war against drug abuse and illicit drug trafficking”. Femi stated.

He averred that drug control is at the centre of protection of public health, social safety and national security.

“By getting drugs out of circulation and away from the reach of youths and the work force, the NDLEA safeguards public health by shielding youths and able-bodied workers from drug dependence,” he explained.

Describing drug as a threat to development, the DG stated that drugs remain a major challenge to human civilization and development.

“Considering the huge volume of resources generated from illicit traffic in drugs, it is a serious threat to national security, the economy and development. The funds may be used to corrupt and compromise law enforcement, judicial and other government officials in order to weaken their capacity to fight crime”.

He identified inadequate funding as the most critical challenge militating against the effectiveness of the Agency. According to him, inadequate funding has made it difficult for the Agency to engage in aggressive drug prohibition and effective drug demand reduction activities.

The DG also tasked the Rotarians to be concerned in the dreaded war against the drug traffickers. He said hard drug is everyone’s nightmare. The many problems and collateral damages associated with the abuse and trafficking of hard drugs are not restricted to deviants or those who operate on the fringes of society as some Nigerians pretend.

“Therefore, drug abuse and trafficking should be your concern as much as mine, as DG. True, you are neither a drug courier nor a drug baron; you do not abuse, misuse, or even use narcotic drug or psychotropic substances. Perhaps, you are a tee-to-teller; you don’t even drink anything alcoholic or use any tobacco, yet, drug abuse and trafficking are still your problems”. Ajayi told the Rotarians.

According to Ajayi, the influence of drug abuse and trafficking has done more harm than good in the country and that the business of drug trafficking is fast crumbling the lives of the future generation of Nigeria.

Hear him: “yes! Though you are not a drug baron, abuser, the next innocent girl that gets raped by a drug-high hippie may be your daughter, sister, or niece! You may not be a junkie but the next person that gets run down by a drug-stone driver or murdered by a drugged criminal could be you or your own son.”

Ajayi attributed the terrorist-bombing of the multi-billion dollar architectural edifice of the United Nations’ plaza in Abuja, which led to the death of scores of people and the maiming of many Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike to the actions of someone who was most probably under the influence of one narcotic drug or psycho-tropic substances or the other.

Speaking further, he lamented over the huge money laundering practices through drug money. He warned that drug money corrupts financial system through the money laundering criminal activities of drug barons and their couriers. He said they cause serious distortions of the national economy.

“There is no denying or downplaying the corrosive, corruptive and destructive effect of dirty drug money on good governance. Drug barons can infiltrate and vitiate the routine operations of government”, he stated.

“Drug money can be used to corrupt law enforcement agencies, compromise top government officials, sponsor political instability or even topple democratic regimes. In the extreme case of drug barons becoming economically powerful and politically influential enough to t6ake over the levers of political governance, drug dealers could run a government of drug barons in the interest of drug barons as had happened in the past in some major drug-producing countries.”

The NDLEA DG hinted to his audience that the quantum of deadly drugs available in the country gives one concern despite the fact that Nigeria is not a producing country. He disclosed that if care was not taken that the merchants of the illicit drugs would overrun the country with their hard drugs which are inimical to health and development of the nation.

“Our children and adolescents can become helpless and hapless victims of health hazards and social consequences of hard drugs. Your little boy or innocent daughter could be lured into sniffing heroine or smoking cocaine crack with all the severe implications: drug dependence, insanity or misery or graduate into criminal activities in order to keep up with expensive of hard drugs consumption.

Drugs could ruin your family life and irreparably pollute your society causing loss of values, moral upheavals and social disintegration”, he stated adding that the level of violence in Nigeria today was aggravated by the drug abuse and trafficking.

 It was gathered from the quest speaker that the huge profits from drug sales facilitate the proliferation of illegal weapons in private hands of several rampaging militia men in all the nooks and crannies of the country. He said it was difficult to exonerate the use of hard drugs from the hair-rising violence and crimes in the crises prone Niger-delta and environmental rights activism axis of the country.

“In the same vein, there is likely to be a connection between narcotics abuse and the mind-boggling and horrendous human massacre that accompany religious riots, boko Haram and other ethno-religious conflicts in Jos and other parts of the country”.

Ajayi cried out of the harms associated with illicit drugs; bemoaning that drug trafficking consequences are very grievous and almost limitless. He emphatically opined that the increasing incidences of street children, adult delinquencies, cultism in schools, religious killings and riots, violent-militancy in communities and political thuggrey cannot be divorced from the deleterious effects of mind-altering drugs on the psyche and health of human beings.

Wrapping up his speech, the NDLEA DG frankly told the Rotarians that the drug war alone cannot be fought and won by the agency and other responsible security organizations in the country without the input of the highly placed organizations like the Rotarian club.

“Drug abuse and trafficking are not the concern of law enforcement agencies alone; they are a major challenge to the mass-media and non-government organizations that must collaborate to use communication along with legislation as a weapon for the war against hard drugs”, he said.

“This implies that drug abuse and trafficking are our collective concerns and challenges. Drug control is therefore our collective task”.

On the problems confronting the agency, Ajayi led the cat out of the bag by letting the Rotarians to know the challenges confronting the agency. He stated that it has not been easy for the anti-narcotic organization in the fight against drug trafficking.

He said aside the lack of fund and other logistics, that the operational hazards which has resulted to some deaths of the officers and staffs of the agency, that the welfare of officers has been nothing but poor.

 He frowned at the slow criminal justice system of the country with its reluctant judicial officers who always fail to visit the full wrath of the law and ensure the full application of dissuasive sanctions as part of the critical challenges to the NDLEA’s effort in battling with the scourge of drug trafficking. Among all the challenges, the DG hinted that funding tops the chart of the problems of NDLEA.

According to him, the inability of the agency to aggressively battle the drug prohibition and effective drug demand reduction activities was the paucity of funds. He said poor funding is largely responsible for the rising rate of illicit trafficking activities while pointing out that that the reflection in the agency’s annual records of arrests, seizures and convictions shows that the counter narcotics approach of the agency was lopsided with a bias towards enforcement and supply control.

He said it doesn’t measure up to the internationally acclaimed best practice of balanced approach to drug law enforcement that emphasizes the simultaneous tackling of both demand reduction and supply control.

“When we underfund or neglect NDLEA, we are indirectly voting for a country of drug dependants and drug addicts; we are nonchalant about narcotic terrorism and drug-driven violent crimes and we are subtly encouraging cannabis to mushroom at the expense of cocoa, cowpea and cassava,” Ajayi warned.

In his position, the NDLEA DG affirmed that because of the threats posed by both drug abuse and trafficking in narcotics to national security and socio-economic development, it was important that NDLEA be sufficiently empowered to handle the two aspect of her drug control mandate.

“The requisite funding and support must be provided by government to enable the agency effectively tackle the drug problem in the country so as to safeguard our youth population, guarantee the health and sanity of our productive force, minimize drug-drug related industrial and traffic accidents, facilitates the maintenance of peace and security, promote our international image and integrity in order to enable the country attract international support and investments, and protect the economy from the adversities of money laundering. NDLEA DG stated.” According to him, such government support would greatly enhance the capacity of the Agency to effectively discharge her responsibility to the nation and enabled her facilitate the creation of the requisite environment conducive for socio-economic development of the country.

Ajayi called on the government not to allow Nigeria to slip into the ugly experiences of Columbia, Bolivia, Mexico and Venezuela with high drug abuse and trafficking which he said simply depicts that ‘drugs are horror most horrible and terror most terrible’, adding that Nigeria with all its multifarious problems and multi-dimensional national challenges, can ill-afford to add to her burden; the strangulating and debilitating woes of abuse and trafficking of illicit drugs.

“It is against this backdrop that I urge all stakeholders in Nigeria’s socio-economic development, particularly the Presidency and the National Assembly that allocates resources to appreciate the critical significance and strategic roles of NDLEA  in safeguarding public health; protecting national security and promoting sustainable development”, Ajayi pleaded.

“As critical stakeholders in Nigeria’s national security and sustainable development, I want to seize this privileged opportunity to call on the politically influential and economically enlightened officials and members of the Rotary club to give direly needed political support to the NDLEA by becoming advocates, goodwill ambassadors and champions for the war against drug abuse and illicit drug trafficking in our country”

Like Ajayi posed in his paper after reading out the dangers and problems associated with drug abuse and trafficking, it’s left to behold, if Rotarians would sit akimbo on the fence and do nothing while Nigeria’s narcotic drug problems assume epidemic problem. Rotarians, what do you do?