THE MANY REFORMS AT THE NDLEA

Lagos

Since the decertification of the Country two years ago, activities of the
NDLEA have been enhanced, Oghenekevwe Laba reports

Despite severe finacial constraint, reforms at the National Drug Law
Enforceemnt Agency (NDLEA) has put some life in the Agency.

The NDLEA, until the assumption of office of the incumbent Chairman, Alhaji
Bello Lafiaji, the Sarkin Baruwa of Katsina, was beset with problems of
corruption, low staff morale, undue administrative bottlenecks and over
centralisation.

Quickly identifying the problems, the new management had set out to address
them, beginning with a thorough clean up of the Agency.

Before the International community, the country was not serious with the
drug war and was decertified. Several efforts made by government, including
diplomatic lobbying did not make the international community and
organisations, particularly the United States Drug Enforcement Agency
(USDEA) and the United States of America (USA), which spearheaded the
decertification, to change their position on the country.

And for eight years, the situation remained same, a situation that excluded
it from the membership of United Nations Organisation on Narcotic Drugs
(UNCD) and United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The Lafiaji team came in to quietly settle down to work, carrying out
reforms and changes that quickly gained world attention. The result was
that within two years in office, they had restored some credibilty to the
Agency, rejuvinated and gave it glory to earn the recorgnition of the
world, which quickly ensured the certification of the country to bring it
to the centre of the war against drugs and drug trafficking globally.

Lafaiji had begun on assumption of office on October 10, 2000, by
streamlining, professionalising and improving on the efficiency and
effectiveness of the Agency through the re-organsation of the
administrative structure, operation, training, drug demand reduction
activities, inter-agency co-operation, international collaboration and
certification.

In his words: "Upon assumption of office, I made a critical study of the
Agency's state of being and discovered that it was very unfocused and
unprofessional. Accordingly, appropriate measures were promptly taken to
streamline, refocus, re-energise and re-orientate the Agency"

The restructuring also involved the establishment of a new command
structure for the Zonal Commands wherein each Zonal Command now has a Zonal
operational and two Deputy Commanders, charged with intelligence and
administration and logistic respectively. The Operational Commanders and
deputy commanders are assisted by five Principal Staff Officers (PSOs)
charged with operations, Intelligence, Administration, Legal Services and
Demand Reduction.

To create job efficiency among the staff, the Sarkin Baruwa of Katsina,
embarked upon a promotion and harmonisation exercise for the personnel. For
over six years before then, there were no regular promotions in the agency.
Employees were arbitrarily graded, resulting in a situation where people
with superior qualification and experience were placed below those they
should ordinarily supercede. Morales were dampened. To redress the
situation,Lafiaji and his new team embarked on a promotion and
harmonisation exercise. The exercise affected about 96 percent of the
Agency's 3,650 workforce.

To ensure that the situation does not repeat itself in the Agency, an
unambiguous promotion timetable and criteria has been specified and put in
place in line with the standard civil service procedure, taking prerogative
of promotion from the control of the Chief Executive.

A condition of service, which was not in existence prior to his assumption
of office, has been worked out. This clearly specified what can and cannot
be done by personnels..

Added to that, the Agency has evolved a Hall of Fame Award to immortalise
staffers, who lost their lives in the cause of performing their duty as a
testimony for gallantry. Children of such officers are entitled to
automatic employment.

To further motivate its personel, the Agency has taken life insurance
policy with the National Insurance Corporation of Nigeria (NICON) for all
its personel and in the event of anyone dying on duty, the family of such
officer is compensated by NICON. Families of deceased staff, who had not
been paid, have been receiving it since Lafiaji assumed office.

The operations of the Agency are now better and more professional. The
clearest indices of the improvement are the increasing number of arrests
and seizures made so far at the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMIA), Ikeja,
Mallam Aminu Kano Airport, Kano, Nnamdi Azikwe Airport, Abuja, and the Port
Harcourt Airport, Port Harcourt.

Between October, 2000 to date, over 300 kilogrammes of cocaine and heroin
have been intercepted and destroyed, with no fewer than 3,000 hectares of
cannabis plantation destroyed and over 2,000 persons prosecuted and jailed.

"What we have noticed in the trafficking trend is the diversion by
traffickers from MMIA, where they can hardly escape arrest. They have
resorted to using other less suspicious airports, like the Nnamdi Azikwe
International Airport, Abuja, and even the Port Harcourt International
Airport. However, we have now left them with no choice, but to leave the
nefarious trade as all the international airports have been well fortified
and traffickers under any guise will not be able to penetrate with ease.

"To also make the hinterland uninhabitable for the traffickers, we have
decided to set in motion a machinery to restructure our zonal commands to
ensure 100 percent coverage of the country. In which case, there can be no
hiding place any more for perpetrators of distardly drug crimes," Lafiaji
told journalists at the NDLEA Headquarters last week.

The Agnecy is currently laying emphasis on demand reduction, through public
awareness, rehabilitation of users and enhacement of the activities of
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to include drug demand reduction as
against the policy of interdiction.

Other strategies, being adopted by the Agency include drug awareness
campaign in schools across the country, development of secondary school
curriculum on drug and teachers' manual in collaboration with the Nigeria
Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), facilitation of
publication of books on drugs and launching of drug-free clubs in several
tertiary institutions.

It has so far rehabilitated over 200 persons, train various voluntary
agencies on modalities for handling drug addicts, reintegrated over 80
rehabilitated addicts into the society and got private sector entrepreneurs
to fund drug demands reduction activities.

Law enforcement, being a multi-agency responsibility, Lafiaji has made
deliberate efforts to strengthen the Agency's relationship with sister
agencies as the State Security Services (SSS), the Police, Customs,
Immigration, the Military and the Federal Airport Authority, making the
Agency more effective at combating drug trafficking in and outside the country.

At the international level, Lafiaji has also fortified the Agency's
frontier by working closely with United States Drug Enforcement Agency
(USDEA), United States State Department Bureau of International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement (INL), the South African Police Service, the German
Secret Police, the Interpol Secretariat and West African Joint Office (WAJO).

These efforts have yielded a lot of successes, and have encouraged the US
International Narcotic Law, the German Police and the South African Police
Service to make a lot of contributions in kind and materials to the Agency.

Since the country was certified in March 2001, its certification has been
continuous, with the recent one in March 2003.

Nigeria was re-admitted into the United Nations Commission on Narcotic
Drugs (UNCND) at the 56th session in New York, a very significant
achievement on the part of the Agency, realising that for four years
running, the country was denied the privilege of being able to speak on
drug matters on the floor of the United Nations (UN) because of its
non-membership of the CND. The admission of Nigeria into the body signifies
that the UN system is satisfied with Nigeria's narcotic regime. The country
can not only vote and be voted for on drug matters, it can attract greater
funding from the UN system for its counter narcotic efforts.

Nothing would better attests to this as the recent election of the
Chairman/Chief Executive of NDLEA as the Secretary of the European Working
Group of the International Law Enforcement Conference.