CORNUCOPIA : Cry! Col. Mustapha Abdullah (Rtd.) running NDLEA aground? The mess getting messier? By Odogwu Emeka Odogwu

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is a Federal agency in Nigeria. Its responsibilities ranged from eliminating the growing, processing, manufacturing, selling, exporting, and trafficking of hard drugs to eradicating of hard drugs patronage hence it destroys cannabis plantations.
Let me spare you the history and leadership of the agency that was established by Decree Number 48 of January 1990 and present the era of the current appointee, Col. Mustapha Abdullah (Rtd.) as Chairman / Chief Executive. He was appointed in January, 2016.
The NDLEA under Abdullah is not only sinking but stinking? My views though. But truth be told, the agency has continued to decay. It is now a ghost yard. Abdullah to me appears to be, the undertaker for the burial of the Agency?
Has he displayed any shred of competence or leadership in the management of the affairs of the Agency? No is my answer!  My discreet tour of formations across Nigeria showed that another name for Abdullah is incompetence, lack of strategy, mismanagement and to say the least corruption? The worst is that Abdullah is President Muhammadu Buhari’s man Friday yet corruption reeks this all important agency, under All Progressives Congress watch? Hypocrisy?
Since January 2016, Abdullah has traveled about 30 times of which 25 was for official engagement outside this shore often times on borrowed money only to pay immediately any money comes into the NDLEA coffers for his estacodes and that of his entourage without attending to pressing matters.
Why won’t corruption cripple NDLEA? Take for instance in 2016, Directorates, States and Special Area Commands across the country got only the sum of N200, 000 (Two hundred thousand Naira only) as operational/ running cost. What was that? In some instances the Commanders go cup in hands begging politicians and state officials for virtually everything. This N200,000 only came for January and February 2017 and since then nothing else.
Imagine NDLEA’s National Headquarters in Lagos to be in complete darkness since August 2016 when PHCN disconnected power supply to the office complex and the contractor supplying diesel stopped diesel over debts. What a shame?
NDLEA management is disorganized between Lagos and Abuja as 3 Directors operate from the ‘ghost’ new office in Abuja, and Chairman/ Chief Executive, CCE operates from Liaison office in the Federal Secretariat, Abuja then majority of the staff and registry are still in Lagos. Is this not confusion?
Abdullah has not convened any management meeting with the Directors since appointed but rather held informal meetings with the Directors on three occasions with no minutes of meeting. What an Administrator?
An Administrator without any policy direction, roadmap, and no single achievement since taking over office. What do you expect from a retired and tired ‘fox’?
Incompetence all over as the sum of N34, 000, 000 (Thirty- four million Naira) received for sports went down as travel without virement and another sum of N80, 000, 000 (Eighty million Naira) released for relocation from Abuja Airport to Kaduna Airport and back to Abuja was long ‘trenchi’.
Again promotion has been an issue since 2013 but Abdullah added no relief by turning down all entreaties to promote officers or restructure the Agency for effectiveness, thus affecting the morale of the officers badly.

Let me not talk of the unwanted deaths due to blood pressure related issues as administrative tasks are done under herculean conditions as there is no light, no diesel/ petrol, no paper – no nothing. Officers come to the office and go home without doing anything day in day out. Is that the NDLEA, Abdullah was bequeathed? The same story if not worse at operational command level despite the news of harvest of arrests.
Your opponent can bring mobilization and you are arrested for drug peddling? You know what I mean?
President and Commander – in – Chief , Muhammadu Buhari could just do the needful and effect changes in the leadership of NDLEA before the obituary is announced. Once NDLEA is gone, then Nigeria is better referred as a Psychiatric nation? What a shame?
Odogwu Emeka Odogwu  is an Editor, and Publisher @ www.odogwublog.com He can be reached via 08060750240 and email [email protected]