By Mary BASSEY, Senior Investigator Correspondent Lagos/
*Felix Ejiofor…
LAGOS- IT is no longer news that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency NDLEA is under a new leadership having lain prostrate for 5 unholy years. It is also not newsy that since the change of baton from the generally acclaimed lethargic Col. Muhammad Mustapha Abdallah (rtd) to an innovative Brig-Gen. Buba Marwa (rtd) as chairman of the nation’s narcotic agency, there had been a paradigm shift in the operational stratagem and the onslaught against drug peddlers and barons alike. What is however, remarkably interesting is the unprecedented vigour with which the war against illicit drug deal is being fought by anti-narcotic agents, the number of arrest made as well as the volumes of hard drugs and other psychotropic substances seized within few months of Gen. Marwa’s ascension on NDELA’s chairmanship stool.
Appointed substantive chairman of NDLEA on January 17, 2021, Gen. Marwa wasted no time in hitting the ground running with his innate innovative prowess. A bridge builder with unrivalled abhorrence for religious and ethnic nepotism, the new NDLEA helmsman immediately embarked on a tour of the agency’s formations across the country with a view to personally assess the degree of structural debauchery, ineptness to lawful duty and the overall staff morale that had nosedived to the nadir. A quick antidote to all of these was proffered and a new order was enthroned with assurances for a much more better days ahead. This was the morale booster and magic wand that enthralled the gross turn-over of efforts in the offensive against the menace of drug deal in the country.
However, discreet investigations have shown that aside the new leadership’s promises to right the wrongs, soothe frayed nerves and re- writes the narrative in NDLEA, there had been an upsurge in the offshore demands for hard drugs. The increase in demand sources said was due largely to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and the attendant global lockdown in 2020. With the demand far above the supply in 2020, the price of a kilogram of any of the hard drugs soared astronomically. For instance, a kilogram of cocaine that usually go for $900 and $15000 in Colombia and New York City now cost $1800 and $30,000 respectively; depending on purity levels. In Italy and other European countries, the street prices of cocaine and heroin have tripled as a result of the dearth in supply. Said a senior NDLEA source, “Two things are responsible for the increase in the number of arrest and interdiction recorded lately: yes, you are right if you talk about the goodwill of our new chairman and his desire to put things in proper perspective as responsible for the zeal of operatives to put in their best, but again, you are aware of the UK involvement in the overall activities in the agency including pumping money into it for optimum results; so for whom much is given, much is expected. But I think another major reason is the high demand and low supply of the drug generally due to the 2020 global lockdown brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. For instance, you are aware that Scotland ranked number one for cocaine use followed by Canada which is the second user and then Brazil, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and England respectively; but you discover that in even in Canada, before now, the Global Drug Survey of 2018 shows that the price of cocaine was as low as $85 per gram; that was two years before the advent of covid-19 pandemic. This is no longer the case as the price per gram has gone up to as far as $150 per gram due to the 2020 global lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic which prevented movements of persons and of course, drugs across the globe. In London for instance, we found out that more people took to the consumption of hard drugs because they were locked down, stressed up because of being in one place and what have you; with more than half a million doses of pure cocaine consumed on average each day. Before the covid-19 lock down, the average daily amount of cocaine consumption in London was put at 23kiligrams but this had tripled and the amount per grams also because of the shortage in supply as against the high demand. So what we find out is drug barons and the peddlers trying to meet up with the high demands using all kinds of tricks to ferry the drugs. But as they are busy devising new tricks, we on our own, are also stepping up of interdiction models. This is largely the major reason why we are recording high rate of arrest and interdiction on our shore.”
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