Nigeria’s drug fighters make record hauls

By Ruona Agbroko
May 31, 2009 03:37PMT

The number of Nigerians arrested at airports trafficking drugs has increased more than 10 times over the last decade, new data from the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has shown.

In 1994, 632 male drug couriers were detained, by 2008 the number of those arrested had risen to 7,584. The figures also reveal that there are a lot more men involved in the crime than women.

Officers of the agency however said they are happy that Nigeria is, largely, not a drug consuming nation. The nation, they said, is however, along the transit route for South East/ South West Asian heroin and South American cocaine to Western markets.
The head, public affairs of the agency, Mitchell Ofoyeju, said illicit drugs from source countries are ferried to Nigeria and on to consuming countries by an increasing number of drug couriers.
“Nigeria is a drug transit country because no dealer will sell a kilogram of cocaine here for N8 million - N10 million when they can get a 500 per cent increase, with just a six-hour flight,” Mr. Ofoyeju said.

“Unfortunately, this has been at the expense of human lives. From 632 male drug couriers arrested in 1994, we apprehended 7,584 in 2008. The females, from 61, have also risen to 315 in the corresponding period.”

According to the agency, drugs barons often recruit couriers or ‘mules’ with fees ranging from N410, 000 to a little over a million naira - upon delivery of drugs worth 30 times more. Every year, a few thousands swallow or hide as much wraps of these drugs as they can, mostly in hotel rooms. Provided with travel documents, they proceed to the airport. The agency’s spokesperson said some flights tend to be problematic in this regard.

“Often, passengers leaving for Amsterdam are likely to carry drugs,” he said. “Flights from source countries such as Brazil also get our attention. Other areas that we concentrate on include flights going to Italy, Rome, Spain, France, and Germany.

As soon as a passenger tests positive, they are monitored at our office in the airports until they finish excreting the drugs. From there, they are taken to the headquarters for investigation. They get access to a lawyer. Occasionally, the drug wraps burst open. One lady slumped even before getting to the screening point and died in hospital,” Ofoyeju said.
The drug trade also seems to have several layers of operatives, apart from the baron and the mule. The baron might also spend up to N10 million depending on the quantity of drugs he is sending, per trip. He or she has to pay the recruiter, the person who sends the drugs to the mule, as well as those who handle the paper work.

“So when we effect an arrest, we have succeeded in taking at least N15 million from a drug baron,” Ofoyeju said. “And we make nothing less than 15 arrests monthly. So if you want to calculate it in monetary terms, it’s over N100 million. Our job ends when the suspects are taken to court.”

It’s a southerner’s game
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in its World Drug Report 2008, said the largest African cocaine seizures were reported by Nigeria in 2006. That year, over 140,000 kilograms of drugs were destroyed to eliminate the chances of their being recycled. The agency couldn’t really tell if more Nigerians are getting involved in the drug trade, or if the agency has gotten better at making arrests.

Mr. Ofoyeju, however, confirmed that the installation of digital body scanners in the country’s four international airports in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and Port Harcourt has aided these arrests. The arrests also show that Nigerians claiming to come from the south east are more involved in the trade.

For the past one year, eight of every ten drug couriers arrested have been from the South-East zone of the country. “Those from the South West go mostly to London,” he said. “Aside ingesting, which is swallowing, those that ‘pack’ are mostly Yorubas.
They ‘pack’ drugs in their luggage, foodstuff, baby food, and all of that. Those that ‘swallow’ are mostly Igbo, and they prefer European countries. Edo State indigenes prefer Italy, and they ‘swallow’; some insert drugs in their vaginas. The scanning unearths all of these, though.”

Roadblocks to success
The agency said it has had to cope with barely adequate funding. Like other Nigerian crime busting outfits, it has sometimes relied on foreign counter narcotics assistance to Nigeria. Since February 2001, the United States financial support for Nigeria’s drug war stood at $3 million. According to the United States Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, this includes payment for the digital body scanners at Nigeria’s airports.

The agency’s officers also have to deal with bad eggs within their ranks. It had to deal with a major scandal in 2005, when confiscated drug exhibits were substituted with fake substances.
Added to these are the failings of other components of Nigeria’s justice system. Critics say the agency’s 1990-2008 prosecution ratio of 14,723 convictions against 280 acquittals mainly traps clueless mules, and not the established drug lords they represent. The big shots remain faceless, merely counting their losses and recruiting new couriers.

Quite like the highly controversial Gloria Okon case in 1985, recently, a drug mule was arrested at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja and convicted in 2006. He was re-arrested three months later, trafficking drugs at the Kano International Airport. Investigations revealed a total of 197 such cases within two years.

In February, the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency’s chief executive, Ahmed Giade, called on the National Assembly to “look at the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency Act again in order to provide commensurate convictions seen in other countries.”

Mr. Ofoyeju, however, said the well-connected jail evasion syndicate had been smashed.
“Our investigations revealed that no National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency staff was involved,” he said. “The two staff of the Federal High Court and ten staff of the Nigerian Prisons Service indicted are currently being tried at the Magistrate Court in Ebute Metta.”

Casualty figures
Though some cocaine refined in West Africa has been seized here, with its users to be found in Nigeria’s larger cities, cannabis remains the most abused drug nationwide, as it is cultivated in commercial quantity in the country.

As with the rest of the world, when drugs and money meet, violence is sure to follow. Last Thursday, two agency officials were killed in an ambush in Kwale Local Government Area, Delta State on their way to work. The National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency “Hall of Fame” also shows that a third of its officials who died in active service were mobbed by angry supporters of about-to-be arrested hemp dealers nationwide.
Some have died in shoot-outs and accidents, with one official killed by the father of a drug suspect. Since 1999, the whereabouts of five officers, kidnapped whilst making drug busts, remains unknown.

Mr. Ofoyeju, however, said enlightenment is crucial to the fight against drugs. If the general public appreciates the damage caused by illicit drugs, they would be better partners in the agency’s fight against drug dealers, he said. He also expressed hope that the salaries for the agency’s 3, 500 employees will be “improved upon”.