Buba Marwa, Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), has said the agency needs more sniffer dogs to tackle drug trafficking and the cartels responsible.
Marwa, who disclosed this while defending his budget before the House of Representatives Committee on Narcotics, in Abuja on Thursday, November 3, said a sniffer dog costs as much as $20,000.
Premium Times reports that the Chairman of the Committee, Francis Agbo (PDP, Benue), had said that he discovered that the agency has no sniffer dog at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
Responding to the comment, Mr Marwa said they have dogs but he will not disclose the number of dogs in order not to reveal its operational capacity to cartels.
“We definitely need dogs. Dogs cost between $15,000 and $20,000 each. I won’t state in this forum to the hearing of the cartels how many dogs we have. We need more dogs. I will take the opportunity to express appreciation to the German criminal police — we work with them. On the dogs, they supply the dogs.
They just supplied a few. More importantly, they are building a six million euro dog training school in Lagos which would be used also with our neighbours in ECOWAS,” he said.