By Williams Anuku, Abuja
The House of Representatives on Monday, kicked against the request for over N2billion by the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), to buy a building for its national headquarters in Abuja.
The agency at its 2021 budget defence session with the House of Representatives Committee on Narcotics, had told the committee that it needed the amount to purchase a befitting property at a choice area in Abuja, for its national headquarters.
Mustapha Abdulahi, Chairman of the NDLEA, in his presentation effortlessly tried convincing the lawmakers that the Agency only a few years ago, moved from Lagos to Abuja, and has been in a rented property.
He said that the relocation of the agency to Abuja had made the administration and corporate activities of the agency effective and convenient.
However, the committee disagreed with him, pointing out that out of the meagre funds that were available to the agency in the proposed budget, purchase of the building had taken almost a larger chunk off it.
The committee, which accused the NDLEA of backwardness and ineffectiveness in its core mandate, said that the Chairman appeared more concerned with the purchase of the building and other structures than pursuing its core mandate.
It queried that in the entire budget, there was no single item pointing to the core mandate of the agency, which was sensitization, advocacy against drugs and narcotics.
The committee advised that rather than channelling such whopping sum to buying a building, the agency should approach relevant agency of government to allocate to it one of the seized property, which government had already concluded to commence disposing of.
It said in view of the desire to cut costs of governance and put more money into areas of operation for effectiveness, the agency should consider this option.
Chairman of the committee, Francis Agbo, criticized the NDLEA for remaining docile and almost unpopular after several years of establishment.
He said there was no need for the agency to cry over the paucity of funds as every other agency of government also lamented the same.
The lawmaker drew the attention of the NDLEA Chairman to the kind of reforms carried out in the National Agency for Food, Drugs, Administration and Control, NAFDAC, under the leadership of its former Director-General, Late Dora Akunyile, who, with a paucity of funds, brought the agency to limelight worldwide.
Agbo told the NDLEA boss to go and work, think of how to fulfil the core mandate of the agency and bring it to the limelight, rather than engage himself in awarding contracts and building houses.
“You have to work very hard, so that Nigerians get to know more about NDLEA, just like NAFDAC did. All agencies that appear here complain of poor funding. You need funds for so much, for operations, sensitization, buying of arms and ammunition”, disclosing that most of the arms the agency was using are outdated, insisting that the arms they wielded were those used in fighting the civil war.
“The arms you have are those that were used to fight the civil war. You need funds to buy arms, ammunition, sniffer dogs”, the Committee Chairman said, insisting that the NDLEA boss must work harder to turn things around for the agency.
