NDLEA DG laments poor funding, says ‘our sniffer dogs are gifts’

Director-General, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Mr Femi Ajayi, has decried the poor funding of the agency, saying the agency had been groaning under poor budgetary allocations.
Ajayi, who spoke with newsmen in Ado Ekiti at the annual congress of the Nigerian Veterinary Medical Association, lamented that the agency had never even purchased a sniffer dog to aid its operations.
The NDLEA DG stated that the dogs currently working for agency at sea, land and airports were donated to Nigeria by the United States, Germany and South Africa, adding, however, that, “we don’t even have up to 10 dogs in the agency.”
He said it was more expensive to maintain a sniffer dog than a human being and called on the Federal Government to make more funds available to the agency, saying this would help the agency attain its operational capacity.
He stated that “NDLEA is one of the poorly funded agencies in the country. Capital budget for the agency in 2012 is N100 million but just N40 million has been released. Last year, just N42 million was released out of N84.5 million. All the scanners in the four international airports were donated to the country. If we are serious about controlling the borders, we are not showing it in the funding of the agency.”