By Adadainfo
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) requires more sniffer dogs to checkmate drug trafficking in the country.
The agency’s chairman Buba Marwa stated this Thursday while appearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Narcotics for budget defence.
Marwa, a retired brigadier general, put the cost of a sniffer dog at $20,000. Answering questions on the presence of sniffer dogs at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja, the NDLEA boss said the airport has some, but their locations are discreet.
According to him, the German government recently donated some sniffer dogs to the agency.
In his words, “We definitely need dogs. Dogs cost between $15,000 and $20,000 each. I won’t state in this forum to the hearing of the cartels how many dogs we have.
“We need more dogs. I will take the opportunity to express appreciation to the German criminal police — we work with them. On the dogs, they supply the dogs.
“They just supplied a few. More importantly, they are building a six million euro dog training school in Lagos which would be used also with our neighbours in ECOWAS.”
Aside dogs, he said the scanner at the Abuja airport is effective in arresting drug cartels passing through the airport.
In his words, “In Abuja, we are working on the dogs, but drugs do not pass because we have scanners.”
He said the agency, in the past twenty months, seized 5.4 million kilogrammes of drugs worth N420 billion. He added that NDLEA secured 3,111 convictions from 19,341 arrests with 3,232 suspects still in court.
NDLEA, according to him, is seeking a budget proposal of N40 billion. The breakdown is that N18.6 billion is for recurrent while N21.4 billion is for capital expenditure.
He appealed to the lawmakers to increase the N13 billion proposed for the completion of barracks to house NDLEA officials. He also solicited additional N10 billion.
