Crises of confidence rocks NDLEA …as NSA queries NDLEA boss

 I don’t romance with barons----------Giade   

Emeka Ibemere

Obviously, crises of confidence are brewing at the Headquarters of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, (NDLEA) over several petitions against the Chairman and Chief Executive of the fund stricken anti- drug agency, Mallam Ahmadu Giade.

At the moment, over 10 petitions of ineptitude and crass corruption against the NDLEA boss have been forwarded to the presidency, National Security Adviser, NSA, Secretary to the Federal Government of the Federation, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Stakeholders and to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

The latest petition, written by one Paul Audu, Paul Audu, Chief Superintendent of Narcotics of National Drug Law Enforcement    Agency (NDLEA), Jalingo, Taraba/Adamawa State Commands has attracted reaction from the NSA, in Abuja.

Last month, the NSA allegedly queried Giade on the promptings of the petitions before it and entitled:  A CONFIDENTIAL LETTER DRAWING YOUR ATTENTION TO THE DIRTY DETAILS OF ALHAJI AHMADU GIADE’S SHADDY DRUG WAR: A BATTLE CRY FOR MY LIFE AND CAREER. Audu in this petition revealed alleged crimes of the Giade. But in a quick response to the petition, the NSA asked the NDLEA boss to reply. The petition dated February 14, 2014, by Audu, said to be one of the vibrate lawyers of the agency wasn’t a lover’s letter after all.

The 16 page petition letter was laced with anger, frustrations and disbelieve of a staff against his boss. It contains heavy allegations against the drug czar who the petitioner accused of running the agency like a family business.

“It is with utmost sense of humility and unwavering patriotism that I am putting forward this confidential letter to His Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This is to put in proper perspective the monumental cover up at the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) by Alhaji Ahmadu Giade, Chairman/Chief Executive of the Agency who continues to orchestrate the false impression that all is well with Nigeria’s drug control”, Paul Audu, the petitioner added.

“As an officer of the agency under oath to put the interest of the nation above any other interest, I am writing this out of duty and from my first-hand cruel experience, and out of the need for the intervention of the Federal Government to save the Agency as well as this country from a potentially implosive and explosive embarrassment, and to also save my life and career already in jeopardy as a result of Alhaji Ahmadu Giade’s persecution and victimization, because of my privileged clues to his scandalous sympathy for and fraternity with Drug Barons”.

According to the petitioner, Giade’s romance with drug barons started in 2005 during the arrest of Akindele Ikumoluyi popularly known as Ile Eru 1 who has been an internationally wanted drug baron but with intelligence at the disposal of the agency, the suspect was arrested. The lawyer alleged that he was instrumental to the arrest to the suspect and prosecution and even to the tracking down of his assets but he was later to discover that his boss, Giade wasn’t happy about the arrest of the suspect.  Audu wrote: “Your Excellency, with all sense of modesty, I have been privileged to not only conceive but give birth to what is arguably the most professional and creative arrest of one of the most notorious drug barons on the shores of Nigeria. This was the arrest in 2005 of the elusive Akindele Ikumoluyi (popularly called Ile Eru 1) that remained on the wanted list of NDLEA for almost a decade”, he stated.

“I was not only instrumental to Akindele’s arrest, but to his successful prosecution and tracking of his assets. I was availed of an avalanche of intelligence that could lead to the arrest of at least four more drug barons, an assurance with which I took my Chairman/Chief Executive, Alhaji Ahmadu Giade into confidence”. Continuing, Audu now threw the bombshell.

“Strangely, events thereafter began to show that Alhaji Giade did not find the arrest of Akindele amusing and further arrests of more drug barons may jeopardize his pecuniary interest, as it were. We began to notice Alhaji Ahmadu Giade’s lack of interest and zeal in pursuing the arrest of the other barons”. “It is therefore on record that Akindele whose arrest was masterminded by me remains the only baron to be arrested in almost nine years of Alhaji Ahmadu Giade’s headship of the Agency as the Chairman/Chief Executive. What has been happening all these years is the arrest of some of the errand boys sent by these drug barons, otherwise known as couriers to trafficked drugs. Information is only extracted from these drug couriers about their principals, otherwise known as drug barons, whom Alhaji Giade and his cronies put into use for their personal aggrandizement”.

According to the petitioner, the situation at the time gave ample suspicion that the anti-narcotic agent’s boss and his some operatives seems to have an accord with the barons and this relationship caused none arrest of any barons in the last nine years of Giade’s administration.

“The situation has become so bad that there has been a somewhat accord between Alhaji Ahmadu Giade and his boys on the one hand and the barons who are willing to sacrifice a few of their messengers to be show cased, so that NDLEA will not come near them (barons). The same way these barons dole out money in all currencies to mumble NDLEA’s investigative voice. This explains why NDLEA mischievously continues to celebrate the arrest of drug couriers on a daily basis while Nigerians fail to ask or have asked tirelessly what is happening to the people sending the couriers”.

According to Audu in his petition, drug control success paradigm globally has long shifted from quantitative to qualitative arrest. He said the arrest of a single baron is worth the arrest of even two thousand couriers and queried. “Where then is our success story which is hinged on arrests of thousands of drug victims classified as traffickers without the arrest of the notable barons”?  He said,

“With all humility, I challenge the Honorable Chairman/Chief Executive of NDLEA (Alhaji Ahmadu Giade) to mention a ‘SINGLE, (JUST ONE, NOT EVEN TWO)’ drug Baron he has arrested and prosecuted since he assumed office as NDLEA Chairman/Chief Executive over eight (8) solid years ago, apart from Akindele Ikumoluyi whom I arrested at the very embryo of his (Alhaji Ahmadu Giade’s) administration”.

Audu said his trouble started immediately Akindele was arrested. He said Giade fired the first salvo by posting him out of the Lagos State to Adamawa/Taraba State Commands where he won’t be able to arrest barons who lived in all the nooks and crannies of Lagos State. For the past seven years, Audu stated that he has been stuck in Adamawa/Taraba. According to him, his posting runs contrary to NDLEA posting and transfer policy of moving officers, especially prosecutors around, after two to three years, for purposes of safety of life. Even with obvious threats to his life. Aside this, the petitioner claimed that Giade has sat on his promotion.

“Your Excellency, ever since the arrest of Akindele, my life, career and family have suffered in the hands of Alhaji Ahmadu Giade, the alpha and the omega of NDLEA. The first shocking thing Alhaji Giade did was to personally post me to Adamawa/Taraba Command of the Agency from where it would become practically impossible for me to think of arresting the barons in Lagos. For the past seven (7) years I have been stuck in Adamawa/Taraba, contrary to NDLEA posting and transfer policy of moving officers, especially prosecutors around after two to three years, for purposes of safety of life. Even with obvious threats to my life, Giade has kept me at one spot, while he has deliberately sat on my promotion, such that I have not been promoted for the past nine (9) years”. The petitioner also made mention of Giade being very vindictive and unforgiving and mischief.

“Your Excellency, a person of Alhaji Ahmadu Giade’s age and capacity should be a father and a large hearted manager of men and resources, with his nation at heart. Sadly, the hallmark of Alhaji Giade’s administration is vindictiveness, witch-hunting, victimization and mischief as can be seen in my case and that of several other officers”, he added.

“Sadly too is the manner in which he has compromised the nation’s drug control efforts with glaring and genuine incompetence, with the arrest of one drug baron in nine years to show, only to turn against the instrument used for the arrest, my poor self! I am humbly appealing to the President to intervene in affairs of the Agency with the urgency needed by a man gasping for breath. Anybody telling you that all is well with NDLEA under Alhaji Giade is only engaging in an exercise in disservice”, the petitioner further writes.

“NDLEA is gasping for breath and its only problem is Alhaji Giade who is running the place like a private kiosk, not even a shop. Allowing Alhaji Ahmadu Giade in NDLEA is like applying expired drugs on a patient.

I would like to assure His Excellency that once a forward-looking and innovative Nigerian is appointed to head the Agency, two months is too much to rake in those drug barons troubling the soul of this country”.

“Sir, attached herein is the penetrating account of my gruesome experience in an attempt to give my best to the Agency where I earn my daily bread and Nigeria, the only country I have to call my own, and how Alhaji Ahmadu Giade has used his sledge hammer to stunt my career in order to satisfy the nation’s enemies (drug barons). My gruesome experience has demoralized ten out of ten NDLEA officers and men.  Your Excellency, I look forward to your prompt, kind and divine intervention in the affairs of the Agency”, Audu concluded.

However, Giade in his reply to the query giving to him by the National Security Adviser’s office of the NSA which was available to Daily Newswatch with Ref. No /CCEO/ 56/VOL. IV and was dated March 6, 2014 and signed by Giade himself was entitled: RE: NDLEA CHAIRMAN/CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S (ALHAJI AHMADU GIADE) UNWHOLESOME FRATERNITY WITH DRUG BARONS; HOW IAM BEING PERSECUTED FOR WAGING WAR AGAINST DRUG BARONS, denied all the allegations raised against him. According the Chairman and Chief Executive of the NDLEA, said after going through the query and enclosed documents containing the petition and wished to reply by saying that he wasn’t the Chairman of the NDLEA at the time. Giade stated that in 2004 when Abdulfatai Olori was arrested as indicated by Paul Audu, the petitioner and an officer, that he was not in the agency and such all assignments and reports of hard working officers would have been referred to the then NDLEA Chairman and Chief Executive of the agency. 

I took over as the Chairman/Chief Executive in November 2005, where I met an organized structure in the Agency with seven Directorates, each Directorate headed by a Director, 2 ASSISTANT Directors and various Principal Staff Officers known as PSOs”, Giade added. In Directorate of Prosecution and Legal Services where the petitioner/ complainant belong to he was not heading or holding any of the above enumerated responsibilities. Thus the margin between the officer Paul Audu and my office is very wide to notice his personal efforts or that of other officers from all the Directorates that made3 up the agency.” Giade in his reply disclosed that reports of officers’ achievement and misdeeds could only be brought to his attention by the officers’ individual Directors, Assistant Directors or in very extreme cases,  by Principal Staff Officers and stated that Paul Audu’s matter was never brought to him as of then by any of his supervisors. On the role played by the petitioner on the arrest of the baron, Giade said he inherited the case and from the brief progress report from the Director of prosecution and legal services on the baron, that there was no indication on the role played by the petitioner.

According to Giade, on February 11, 2008, against the existing Agency’s protocol, the petitioner wrote a memo to him by-passing both Adamawa and Taraba States Commanders who he said the petitioner was working under to request and appeal for special promotion and that no disciplinary measure was taken against the officer because of the interesting story he raised in his memo adding that the juicy story he told in his memo was heard for the first time by the DG/Secretary of the Agency and himself. The NDLEA boss said that his comment to the officer’s memo speak for itself. Giade writes, “In the Agency’s proof of evidence prepared by the officers Director, where all the roles played on the matter (there in referred by Paul Audu) by all concerned officers on the case and dully signed by Director of Prosecution and Legal Services, the officer’s name was not among those that played any role on the matter, and till date, I’m yet to receive any write up from the officers supervisors on the role he was assigned/played by him as claimed in his petition”, he added, “please note particularly in above Preci  of evidence where NDLEA Commander, Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja was contacted by the said Baron requesting him to assist and pass his couriers. The above left no doubt how intelligence was built before the arrests of the baron being referred by Paul Audu”. The drug Czar further disclosed that after that arrest of Akindele’s courier in Abuja, investigation revealed that the baron, Akindele and his courier, Ruth George were accommodated at room 204 and 205 at Park View Hotels, Abuja before she proceeded to Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport Abuja and her subsequent arrest. “The above documented evidence, Akindele’s documented approach to the commander for assistance coupled with the one kilo gram of cocaine arrested from her left, the courier with no option, then to co-operate with the agency as a prosecution witness against Akindele who the agency knows as her baron”,

Giade explained further. “Note that the petitioner was neither assigned nor handled the above mentioned matter in any official way. Sensitive issues like the above one are handled in the agency based need to know only. His claimed to have assisted in making Ruth to cooperate with the Agency is totally false, baseless and unfounded”. “Generally, the NSA may wish to refer to the list and report of arrested barons by NDLEA officers during my present leadership”.

In stating his point clear, NDLEA boss explained that prosecution Unit and arm of the agency is saddled by law to handle process and prosecute all arrested drug suspects by the Agency and that they were not in any way responsible for conducting surveillance, arrest and seizure of drug suspects and he said these have been that standard rules in the agency from inception till date adding that such practices are in line with international best practices. “All request for surveillance, raid operations for the arrest and seizures of drug are done in writing with due recommendations and subsequent approval by appropriate authorities. It is my belief, the petitioner, must have forgotten to attach the approval given to him for the specialized undercover operation he said to have conducted”. He said.

“All Agency’s specialized covert and overt operations are passed on to DG/Secretary of the Agency or myself with required funds for approval. Nothing of such came to me or DG of the Agency, who then approved the funding in Paul Audu’s operation? Or does the offer run a charitable organization for assisting government organizations”?

On Audu’s non promotion, Giade stated that the petitioner was employed into the Agency on 27 January 1997 and that his appointment was confirmed on the 11 October 2003. According to the NDLEA’s boss reply to NSA, Audu’s promotion and harmonization was adjusted from DSN to SN (level 10 to level 12).

Giade maintained that the petitioner was again promoted from level 12 to level 13 on December 2010 under his leadership.

“The officers/complainant (Paul Audu received a commendation from me on 18 July 2011, following recommendation by the State Commander, Imo State Command, who the officer worked with when he was his commander, Taraba State. Sequel to the above, Adamawa State Commander made the same request for the petitioner’s Special promotion/ commendation on 4^th August 2011, barely a month after I gave the officer commendation”.

Also not done, Giade in his reply told NSA that the petitioner was posted from Abeokuta Command to the NDLEA headquarters in Shaw Road Ikoyi, Lagos State in July 2001and that Paul Audu was in Lagos up to 2007, six years before his posting to Adamawa and that the officer didn’t complain of threat to his life. “For clarity, NDLEA Management took decision not to post any officer into or out of those three states, after the emergence of Boko Haram insurgency,” Giade explained. Stating further in his response to the NSA’s query to Giade, NDLEA boss alleged that the petitioner was first queried on 16 March, 1999 for conspiracy, aiding and abetting the illegal prosecution and eventual low sentence awarded against one Chief Zaccheaus Dpanus. The officer was indicted in an investigation conducted by the office of the internal Affairs of the Agency, after an incident report sent to me by the officer’s commander. His query, response to the lost of Agency’s vehicle, driven personally by him for his personal commitments”, Giade writes to the NSA.

As that was not enough, Giade told NSA in his reply that in a separate development, the officer while trying to recover the stolen NDLEA vehicle from him, arrested some suspects but illegally detained them in NDLEA cell for some number of days rather than transferring them to the police immediately.

“The above development led to the award of N1.5million damage to the detainees by a competent court of law. Even though, the agency has appealed against the judgment, the Agency administratively, queried the petitioner, his commander for the illegal detention of the suspects in their own cell leading to the award of compensation by the court in Adamawa State”. According to the drug Czar, the petitioner refused to answer query citing the fact that the matter was under appeal before a competent court.

“His above submission further opened the Agency’s eye to await any action on his matter until the case is disposed from the appeal court. Note that any officer undergoing any disciplinary procedures cannot at the same time have their promotion exercise until the conclusion of their disciplinary procedures”, Giade stated adding that the decision was communicated to the petitioner. Concluding his reply, Giade averred that the petitioner’s remark on him as regards unwholesome fraternity with drug barons has not been substantive.

 “Though, the officer may in his own right be free to express his opinion as a Nigerian but for reality sake, I was hoping he will cite a single case, in his position as an insider who must have known the Agency very well. Regrettably however, it is most unfortunate that in all the above development relating to the officer, Paul Audu, I did not see any connection between the officer’s progression in the Agency and my office as the Chairman to warrant his victimization or any other staff of the Agency”, Giade replied.