A number of senior managers at the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) have petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari over the recent appointment of the agency’s immediate past Director General, Ahmadu Giade, as a special assistant on drug matters to the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami. The petitioners alleged that Mr. Giade had enriched himself by fraternizing with drug barons, acquiring swanky homes and hotels, and running the NDLEA aground.
SaharaReporters obtained a copy of the petition dated December 14, 2015, addressed to Mr. Buhari and copied to several other government officials, Vice President Yemi Osibanjo, Senate President Bukola Saraki, Speaker of the House Yakubu Dogara, and Mr. Malami.
The NDLEA’s senior officers described Mr. Giade’s appointment as “a monumental faulty judgment of character,” adding that the appointment was “an unfortunate decision that should be reconsidered immediately.”
The petition stated that Mr. Giade “is a recent story of misfortune,” who was “opportunistically appointed as NDLEA Chairman/Chief Executive by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005 through the manipulative influence of Malam Nuhu Ribadu who was then the EFCC chair.” According to the petition, Mr. Giade’s 10-year term at the helm of the NDLEA was unproductive, adding that the former DG ran the organization aground. They petitioners disclosed that the staff of the agency “heaved a long held sigh of relief” at Mr. Giade’s exit.
According to the petition, the former DG presided over Nigeria’s transformation “from a drug transit nation into a drug producing and consuming country.” The petition added: “Illicit drugs have become commonplace such that it could literally be procured from every street corner in any part of the country. The immediate consequence is that the nation’s once-vibrant youths have become ready recruits for drug trafficking and now embarrassingly populate foreign prisons. Some of these misguided youths were actually executed. On the domestic front, Giade's era superintended the consignment of our children into drug addicts and junkies.”
Describing Mr. Giade’s leadership of the agency as lackluster and lacking in focus and direction, the petition accused the former DG of “managerial incompetence which resulted in colossal failure to attract funding for the activities of the Agency throughout his tenure. Of course, the ripple effect was the dilapidation and collapse of the structures and infrastructure of the organization as well as organizational loss of relevance in the scheme of things.”
The petitioners declared that Mr. Giade’s maladministration adversely affected morale at the agency, adding that the former DG enthroned “a totalitarian and evil regime that favored and celebrated mediocrity in NDLEA in his ten years reign of terror. For instance, he inappropriately, without recourse to rule or due process, promoted his cronies above eminently more superior and competent officers and in the process created a critical state of confusion and indiscipline in the system.”
More critically, the petitioners stated that acts of corruption and financial malfeasance were commonplace during Mr. Giade’s tenure at the agency. They informed Mr. Buhari about “a number of petitions to the Presidency on allegation[s] of fraternity with drug barons against Giade. In fact, the office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) has been mandated to investigate one such allegation which is still ongoing. Perhaps one of the most ruthless and unconscionable act[s] of profiteering supervised by Giade was the taxing of unemployed youths who were seeking employment in the Agency. Nearly half a billion naira of the proceed from the exercise remains unaccounted for till date. Over two hundred thousand Nigerian youths at home and in Diaspora bought the scratch card but only about two thousand were eventually recruited. Of those recruited, more than half were not among those who bought the scratch card!”
The petition alerted Mr. Buhari that the former DG “has no professional competence or capabilities on drug control to qualify to be able to offer any advice” to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice. It warned that Mr. Giade could only offer the Attorney General “atavistic, stone age, unhelpful and self-serving ideas,” adding that Mr. Giade was “almost eighty (80) years old” and incapable of “coping with the speed of contemporary changes.”
The petitioners accused Mr. Giade of harboring “sinister intentions in seeking and accepting this subordinate office of Special Assistant after having served for ten regrettable years as Chairman/Chief Executive of NDLEA on [a] consolidated salary.” Noting that the former DG would be placed, at best, on “a comparatively lower salary GL 15 or 16,” the petitioners questioned Mr. Giade’s motive for accepting the position.
They blamed former EFCC chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, for exhuming Mr. Giade and foisting him on the NDLEA. They alleged that, on assumption of duty, the former DG “began to cultivate drug barons who illegally enriched him. Through the patronage he enjoyed from these merchants of death, he was enabled to build the two magnificent houses he now owns, one in Kano and the other in Abuja, and chains of hotels in Kaduna.”
The petition also stated that the drug smuggling criminals “also bankrolled [Mr. Giade’s] mechanized farm (reputed to be one of the largest farms) in Adamawa State where two huge 1200 KVA industrial generators were bought and installed. The purchase was facilitated in Lagos by two NDLEA senior officers (one of them speaks English language with a lisp) who were known to be strong members of his kitchen cabinet. Giade harbors very desperate desire to provide shield and protection for these barons as well as ensure that his despicable and dirty activities are not unearthed. He is therefore banking on the privilege which he will enjoy as representative of the Honorable Attorney General and Minister of Justice on the Board of the Agency to achieve these goals.”
The petitioners questioned why a man under investigation for multiple allegations of corrupt practices at the NDLEA had been given a sensitive appointment. They added that Mr. Giade desperately needed an appointment that would enable him “to influence the outcome of the ongoing investigation by the Office of the National Security Adviser.”
The petitioners also expressed concern that the former DG would use his current post to meddle in the affairs of the NDLEA and “maintain his hold” on the agency, adding that he “has striven so hard and has succeeded in planting his cronies in the Agency.”