Buba Marwa, the chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), has revealed that the agency needs more sniffer dogs to prosecute war against drug pushing, adding that each sniffer dog costs about $20,000.
The NDLEA boss disclosed while defending his agency’s budget before the House of Representatives Committee on Narcotics on Thursday.
At the parallel market one dollar sells for N800, therefore a sniffer dog would cost the Nigerian government N16 millon, going by Mr Marwa’s proposition.
“We definitely need dogs. Dogs cost between $15,000 and $20,000 each,” Mr Marwa said. “I won’t state in this forum to the hearing of the cartels how many dogs we have. We need more dogs,” he said.
Mr Marwa did not state how many sniffer dogs the agency needs, making it difficult to estimate how much the NDLEA will spend on sniffer dogs in the proposed budget.
However, he explained that the agency is proposing a N40 billion budget for 2023. Recurrent expenditure will cost about N18.6 billion, while capital expenditure will cost N21.4 billion.
