Centre tasks NDLEA operatives to be vigilant at MAKIA

Senior Programme Officer, Centre For Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Malam Isah Garba has called on operatives of the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) to beef up security checks at the nation’s Airports for real drug pushers to be apprehended and brought to book.

Speaking to news men in Kano yesterday, Garba said the saga of Zainab Aliyu, a student of Maitama Sule University Kano, who was detained for months in Saudi-Arabia in connection with the luggage containing drugs had left much to be desired in terms of getting the real owners of the luggage prosecuted adding that there might be many more like Zainab in Saudi detention facing a similar fate.

According to him, the NDLEA must intensify their search and surveillance of passengers’ luggage and the environment during boarding and ensure that no luggage was tempered with after the legal owner had checked in and that no luggage should escape the screening process with the real owners identified.

He said the Airliners, on their part, should make sure that luggage under their custody were under effective care in such a way that nobody tamper with them and report to appropriate agencies any of their staff or of the company they contacted in packaging luggage found to be tampered with or inserting something into passengers’ luggage.

He however stated that, there was the compelling need for the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and union of travel agencies to work together in fishing out travel agencies that cheat ignorant passengers in the process of their business and possibly delist them if they fail to comply with warning and standard of operations.

He called on media establishments in the country to partner with stakeholders in enlighten the public on the air travel operational guidelines.