INTERVIEW: We Had A Case Where The Importer Offered N6 Million To Our Investigators Over A Case …..NDLEA Commander, Abubakar

THE National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) Commander of Narcotics (CN) Mohammed Aminu Abubakar, Special Area Commander of Tin Can Island Port Command comprising – Kirikiri Lighter Terminal KLT and Port and Terminal Multiservices Limited (PTML) respectively, in this interview, shed light on the operations of his personnel.In a chat in Lagos recently, the NDLEA boss since his assumption of office in 2022, spoke on the successes recorded by his command and how they intend to improve on their performance.

Excerpts..

Can you tell us some of the seizures made in the last seven months in this your command?

From January till date, we have over two tonnes of cannabis sativa which we have seized from drug traffickers concealing drugs in used vehicles from Canada.
This is one of the menace that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is confronting in the maritime industry.
We also had a seizure of over 26 tonnes of cough syrup with codeine. During the period, we had a lot of seizures to the extent that we had an average of one or two seizures every month.
For the individual seizure from containers, we had up to 29 or more seizures within the period. In each container, we have different kinds of drugs like cannabis concealed in the panels of the vehicles, and sometimes a whole consignment in a container. We also had seizures of heroin and cocaine within the period.
In the previous month, we had several seizures of cannabis indica coming from Canada which is called Canadian Laud. They come in various degrees or quantities. Initially, the seizures were in single and double digits like 20 or 39 kg but recently the seizures are in 100s of kgs.

Can you give us the rough estimate of the street value of the seizures you have made within the period?

That is one thing we don’t always dwell on often, because the more you tell the public about how much money is involved in some nefarious activities, you are indirectly making a recruitment speech for them to join. That is why most atimes, we don’t want to emphasize on the monetary value of those seizures.

“At Tin Can, NDLEA command, training has been our priority, “.. Abubakar

Since your assumption of office here in 2022, there has been massive seizures of illicit drugs, how do you achieve that?

There are many factors, one of which is attributable to lots of training gotten by my officers. Another is we don’t work alone, we work with different kinds of law enforcement bodies nationally and internationally who are our technical partners in waging total war against illicit drug traffickers.
Our staff are being trained on how to detect and how to source for information, and the devices we use to detect the drugs in our shores are being provided by some of the partners. We are prepared.
Then other thing is motivation. Under the present dispensation, the chairman has done all it takes to motivate all members of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency to do their work. So, I think the motivation is high in terms of what it takes to perform in any kind of situation. So, I think that is what we have to our own side.
These are what combined to bring the differences in terms of our own performance over the years here in Tin Can Island Port.
At Tin Can NDLEA command, training has been our priority, and anyone in the command that is selected to go for training, we make sure that whatever the person learns there, he/she imparts it on all our staff because work is not done by only one person, but knowledge may come from a single entity.
There is no way everybody can go for training, because the resources are not there but when he/she comes back, he/she will share the knowledge with others, that’s what we do here and that has been the backbone of our success.

 

Has there been anytime that any of your officers is caught in compromise with the importation of these illicit drugs?

 

So far, during my stewardship, I have never had such experience. That can be attributed to the fact that we are always active in terms of looking at situation even before it happens and put a plug to it. We also have our reporting system. The reporting system is helping us a lot. Whenever we make any seizure, I have only three hours to report it to the CEO of the agency, Brig Gen. Buba Marwa. It also applies to our arrest. You can’t just make arrest and keep a suspect as you wish. As soon as you make the arrest, you must communicate it to your immediate superior.
As soon as you make the report, no matter the power that you have, the power to do or undo has gone out of your hands. If you have to do something otherwise, you have to go back and explain why you did it to your superior.
Same thing applies to the people working under me. That is, the OCs of various terminals, bonded warehouses, they have to report whatever happens as soon as it happens and once they report it, it goes out of their hands.
That has helped to drastically reduced any kind of infringement, because once you make the report, you have already committed yourself.
I think all these administrative mechanisms have reduced a lot of infringements in terms of staff misbehaviour.

“We Have An Average Of One Or Two Seizures Every Month At The Port “.,….. Commander Abubakar

Can we look at the number of arrests made within the six months period?

 

We had a lot of arrests in connection with the seizures. Although, most of the times, the importers of the illicit substances are not always present when the examination of the containers are being conducted or when their cargos are being cleared out of the ports. So, we are always dealing with the clearing agents who most of the times, bear the brunt of the arrests. Therefore, we have been sensitising them at different fora to take proper care to know their customers. This is when drug is discovered, you should be able to provide convincing evidence that you have no consensual part in the trafficking of the drug.
You can’t just take orders over the phone meanwhile, and if there is something found inside his items, you can’t point to whereabout of the importer.
We have several cases where a clearing agent will tell you he took the job via a phone. So, at the end of the day, they send the money to him anonymously.
Another issue is using the POS because it provides anonymity between two persons doing business. If you use POS, it is the POS owner and the receiver that will be seen but the third person who places the order for the transfer of whatever amount of money, is out of the equation and remains anonymous.
Most of the times, we have cases like that but the provisions of the law is quite clear concerning those things. If you are the agent of any importer, you take over his legal entity regarding the object of your agency.
So, it is clearing agent we see at the port positioning container for examination, and any agent who can assist our investigation, he has nothing to fear, otherwise, he bears the consequences of whatever is found in the container.
As far as the law is concerned, whoever presented cargo for examination,he is the owner until he can prove otherwise. Sometimes, some agents are so big, that they are agents as well as importers at the same time. An agent needs to indemnify himself against any eventuality in the course of doing business.
I think that is being minimized now because since I came here, I have taken time to educate and enlighten them concerning that kind of situation
Another thing is the issue of authorizing a third party individual to use somebody’s license to clear cargo. There are agents with licenses, while there are some without license. In order for them to do business, they get authority from those who have licenses to carry out a clearing business. So, in the case where you allow a third party to use your license, and you don’t know the person, you will bear the consequence of whatever he clears.
We have a lot of cases which bother on that and where licensed agent could not provide satisfactory information of individual he authorised or the actual owner of the container. In this case the agent automatically becomes the owner that is, the culprit.

 

Can you give us the specific number of arrests made within the six months period?

 

I can only give you an estimate because I don’t have the record here. I can’t say in the last six months we have over twenty arrests but not all of them are being prosecuted. Like what I told you, we will make arrest and carry out investigations and in the course of investigation, if for instance, the arrested agent assists with the investigation, which means he is not aware of the real contents of the container, hence at the end of the day, we will free him.

“There are many instances like that. I think we had a case like that last year where an importer who was outside the country through the persons arrested by us, offered and tried enticing our officers with $22,000 .” ….Abubakar

Have there been instances where drug peddlers try to entice your men with huge sums of money to avoid arrest in this command? How did you handle them?

 

There are many instances like that. I think we had a case like that last year where an importer who was outside the country through the persons arrested by us, offered and tried enticing our officers with $22,000 . We took the dollars and used the money as evidence to prosecute them. I think they are still serving their jail term. The money was used as an evidence against them.
There are many instances like that but this particular one took place last year.
Even recently, we had a case where the importer offered N6 million to our investigators over a case. They told me and I asked them to play along. That is it. We will take you and the money to court because by offering the money, you already know what you are doing, hence the effort to bribe the officer to avoid prosecution.

 

Why is it that your command is more noticed for drug seizure than the Lagos Port Complex?

It is by the grace of God, notwithstanding, like I told you earlier, may be we are doing what we are doing differently from other commands to improve our performance.We have a lot of trainings from our technical partners, a lot of my officers are beneficial to trainings within and outside the country. Furthermore, what I do here which probably may be different from other commands is that whenever anyone goes for a training, the materials and the knowledge from the training is shared by all the officers in the command. This we achieved through replication of the training here for others to gain from it.

 

Don’t your counterparts in other commands go for the same training?

They do too, but what I don’t know is whether they try to replicate it within their own population or not because this job is not just for one person. One person may go for a training, the training must be shared by all members of the command. If you don’t share knowledge, it becomes useless because an individual cannot be everywhere, he can’t do the work alone.

Could we then say that illicit drugs come through Lagos Port Complex but escape the prying eyes of the operatives there?

I think that is one way we could put it. This is because all drug barons know where they could more easily pass through a check. We have instances where we have seizures from bonded warehouses and sometimes we get it from the main port terminals here. So, wherever they think they will have it easier, they will try to move it. Most times, the drugs we seized at the port complex are meant for bonded warehouses.

From what you have said, are you saying you are going to beam your searchlight on bonded terminals now more than before?

It is part of what we do because bonded warehouses are usually used for illegal activities because they are situated outside the port complex. Sometimes the owners of the bonded terminals are also clearing agent, and because of all these, they are usually our major focus. That is why when sometimes we suspected a higher probability of drug concealment, we stop the container right here, we don’t allow them to get to the bonded warehouses before we conduct full inspection. To achieve that we usually work with the Nigeria Customs Service. Customs are the lead agency in the port. Moreso, we have an MOU that allows us to work together and share intelligence.

When you assumed office here in 2022, the arrest of dockworkers in connection with drugs was prevalent. What informed your decision to go after dockworkers?

It is natural, it is not as if someone somewhere decided to go after dockworkers. Dockworkers are part of the industry stakeholders and they are also the people with access to cargo during examination. When it comes to port activities, you can’t do without them. So, because of their access, those influenced by greed, compromised, and are the ones we go after. I know that in the past, their leaders denied that some of them we arrested are not their members. Sometimes, it is the port security or police at the gate of the various ports who through their duties arrest some of them with one or two pouches of the cannabis indica stolen from a container during examination.
So, it means during examination they had the opportunity to steal some of the drugs, because they are the ones uploading the goods.
One of the recent interceptions we made, we arrested two dockworkers for conspiring with container agent remove drug from one uncleared container to another already cleared.

Among the terminals under your watch, which one can you say is the most volatile it terms of drugs importation?

You are talking about the probability but to me, they are all the same because they all have equal chances of having a containers used to conceal drugs. But if you talk about frequency of arrest and seizure, most of the times, these drugs come from Canada to Nigeria while there are some coming from US, and most of the containers coming from Canada to Nigeria come through TICT. So, you can say the frequency is higher there. So, most of the seizures are made in TICT Terminal, though that does not mean that other terminals do not have probabilities of having containers used to conceal illicit drugs. It all depends on where the ship is coming from or from where the container originated

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Is there no way NDLEA can contact the Canadian authorities since most of the consignments come from there to stop the influx into Nigeria?

There have been engagements even myself personally have been part of the engagements with the Canadian authorities in Nigeria. The only thing is that there is high cannabis prevalence in Canada, and it is still legal, it is allowed to be used which I think is their government policy. But I think they are beginning to have a rethink because I saw a recent article where their politicians are calling for rethink. This is because they noticed a lot of harm coming from misuse of the drug in their society.
Since it is legalized, I think there is easy access and in the movement of the drug. As the norms generally, only few countries concern themselves with what goes out of their countries, they concentrate more on what comes in . I think there is a continuous engagement between our institution and Canadian authorities on the issue.

What’s your relationship with you staff that makes them remain loyal and committed to doing the right thing all the time?

The loyalty is to the agency itself. However, we have a lot of mechanisms in the agency, some of them being introduced by the present regime through the Chairman/Chief Executive of the agency that assured our loyalty to the organisation. The promotions, elevations, awards for better performance have all been parts of the mechanisms of the present regime to command loyalty and performance from members of the organisation. For instance, award ceremonies are done twice in a year. People who distinguished themselves in terms of performances are recognized nationally. This is part of our are motivations.
Here, within my own power make sure that whatever that is supposed to get to everybody, gets to him. There is no favouritism. So, everything is distributed evenly on the basis of individual performance.
I have been recommending some of my officers for awards, and many have gotten already.
We have more than 20 personnel who were recognised nationally, myself, I was a recipients of the award at one time.

 

What are some of the challenges you encounter in the course of your operations here in this command and tell us the condition of equipment at your disposal ?

Well, there is nobody without some kind of challenges but I will say that so far so good, we have the trainings and equipment to help us carry out our jobs effectively well. We have devices that w use to detect illicit drugs concealment.
However, I think we still need more to cover all areas of our operation. We also seek and want more synergies with our stakeholders especially, Customs Service to more effectively deal a blow against drug traffickers in the maritime domain.
This is a job that one agency cannot do alone, we need each other because we have different roles to perform in the same entity. So, most of the times, like I said earlier, we work hand in hand with the Customs but we have the challenge that whenever we make seizures or arrests, the seizures or arrests remain with the Customs for sometimes before they hand over to us. Most times, this creates gaps to the benefit of the traffickers, it puts some dents to our own investigations because the investigation of drugs is usually matter of speed. If you cannot do everything in speed, you lose a lot in term of evidence trails.
As you know, drug barons and traffickers are almost always ahead of us. As we are doing our own planning, the criminals too have their own plans and most times, they are ahead of us. So, any gap created by bureaucratic tendencies are exploited by them to their advantage, they will have the chance to move ahead of you. So, I think it is one of the challenges we are facing here.
I know that they have the responsibility of accounting for the containers that enter the country but doing it should not stop another agency from carrying out it’s own statutory roles. I think that they can account for the consignments but not by holding on to the exhibits, or suspects but by maintaining record of events.

How long do they hold on to the exhibits?

No particular time duration. The latest seizure we made last week is still with them. It is only the suspect that is with us became we arrested the suspects separately before the full inspection of the containers