Buba Marwa: A bar beyond boos

THE news was terrific: in what was apparently the biggest singular cocaine seizure in its history as Nigeria’s premier anti-narcotics agency, operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) busted a major warehouse in a secluded estate in Ikorodu area of Lagos where 1.8 tonnes (1,855 kilogrammes) of the illicit drug conservatively vàlued at $278, 250,000 (N194, 775,000,000) were seized. Four drug barons, including a Jamaican and the warehouse manager, were arrested in the well-coordinated and intelligence-led operation that lasted two days across different locations in the Centre of Excellence. The suspects, members of an international drug syndicate on the NDLEA radar since 2018, include Messrs Soji Jibril, an indigene of Ibadan, Oyo State; Anambra-born Emmanuel Chukwu; Oyo State born-Wasiu Akinade; Sunday Oguntelure of Okitipupa, Ondo State origin and Kelvin Smith, a native of Kingston, Jamaica. The astounding discovery, the product of solid intelligence and hard work, thrilled President Muhammadu Buhari, who told the NDLEA boss, Buba Marwa: “You have demonstrated over and again that choosing you to lead this fight against wicked merchants of death whose sole aim is to endanger and truncate the future of our youth is a very good choice. Please keep up the good work.”

Actually, Marwas is no new entrant into the national consciousness. If Area Boys, the ubiquitous thugs who make life a nightmare for many, can still be found in Nigeria’s Centre of Excellence, it is because democracy came undoing certain steps of statecraft by khakimen. In the 1990s when you traversed Ikorodu, Lagos Island and virtually every part of Lagos, the boys, present as the sun, were a gory spectre of the landscape. Their job, when they were not mauling the peace of night, was mendicancy. It did not matter if you weren’t overly wealthy: the slightest sign of well-being was enough to court flattery, especially if you rode in a car: “Ah! Step over me, Baba! Mistakenly born in Nigeria! Breakfast in Washington, lunch in Aso Rock! O tun se kini? O tunjeun ale ni Dangote! (And he did what? He ate breakfast at Dangote!). Baba o!” Naturally, with such super praise, you had to part with something, unless you wanted dinner with the devil.

The boys loved parties, and in fact the climate of violence witnessed in gigs troubled many, including Musibau Alani, the musician of the streets. An exasperated Alani sang: “Ka ma i fa gbolohun aso, won lo y’adayobe, o tojusu mi l’Ekoile, e dakun e nasurusi o!” (At the slightest sign of an argument, they bring out machetes and knives. I’m tired of this violence in Lagos. Please let’s exercise patience!). The violence apart, there was also the unceasing ferment of the annulment of June 12. Lagos, thanks to Afenifere and NADECO, was the national capital of dissent, and Area Boys latched unto the opportunity to perpetrate crime. Enter Marwa, the Fulani soldier from Adamawa who was, against all odds, to calm the storm.

On assuming office in 1996, Marwa wanted to solve a puzzle: which of the boys ravaging the streets were just there (on the streets) on account of unemployment, and which of them were there as full-time criminals? He decided to address the unemployment question and then see what would come up. Declaring the Area Boys to be “good boys” who only needed guidance, mentorship and, best of all, good jobs, Marwa unleashed a project of skills acquisition training in various vocations, following which the boys were assisted to establish small-scale businesses. Indeed, many were engaged by the state’s direct labour agency and worked on road reconstruction. Gainfully employed, most of the Area Boys disappeared from the streets, and with that, their trouble. But then there were the unrepentant criminals, including trans-border robbers, to deal with. The answer: Operation Sweep, a no-nonsense military outfit that took the battle to criminals. But beyond soldier’s bullets, Marwa, his gaze firmly fixed on the future, wanted to leverage on technology.

Tasked with rolling out innovative technology to address the festering crime rate, the increasingly beloved MILAD set up an office located in Alausa, the State Secretariat, which unfolded the Vehicle Tracking System. Once a motorist subscribed, their vehicle was safe anywhere in Lagos State. If a vehicle was stolen or snatched at gunpoint, all that the victim had to do was to send a code to that office, and the vehicle was immediately demobilized. The government told car owners to obey the armed carjackers while surreptitiously contacting the office: the vehicle would be demobilised, and then men of Operation Sweep, who occupied the ground below at the office near the Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre, would move in to recover the car. There was also Alarm Network, an anti-burglary facility that homeowners pressed through remote control and alerted the office when under threat. Naturally, the system was not perfect—Operation Sweep was sometimes accused of excesses—but even the staunchest critics admitted that Lagos had been made safe.

Beloved as MILAD, Marwa had little trouble gaining entrance into the residence of Basorun MKO Abiola following his death in July 1998. MKO was suspected to have been killed and the crowd, opposed to the Sani Abacha-led junta with venom, vowed that no soldier would come in on a condolence visit. But then, Marwa came calling. And the people relaxed their decree, singing: “Marwa o, o se wo ni, awa o je gba soja laye, Marwa o, o se wo ni.” (Marwa, this is because you are the one involved. We admit no soldiers in; Marwa, this is because you are the one involved.)

Of course, now in 2022, Marwa no longer has the agility of youth, but his passion for excellence remains seems to have increased with age. Intending to make a change at the NDLEA when President Buhari tapped him for the top job, Marwa, reliving his experience of bitter conflicts with Chadian rebels when he was Borno governor and the battles of Lagos, now devised mechanisms for a different kind of war. The problem at the NDLEA, he discovered, was principally about morale. And so he boosted the morale and confidence of the agency’s officers and men by addressing their welfare and career stagnation issues. Then he attracted international support (donation of operational equipment and technical assistance by the UNODC and the European Union, etc), fostered partnerships with drug law enforcement agencies in foreign jurisdictions through MoUs and intelligence sharing, then launched an onslaught on drug cartels across the country. So far, the agency has arrested close to 9,000 drug traffickers and, by last year, five major drug barons; secured over 1,630 convictions, and made cash and drug seizures valued at over N294 billion, taking the latest seizure into consideration.

But as we learn in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, justice is not served by punishment alone. The character Angelo, who makes a powerful case for justice without mercy, saying “We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape till custom make it their perch and not their terror,” eventually loses the argument. For as Escalus, his fellow deputy, argues: “Let us be keen, and rather cut a little / Than fall and bruise to death.” Marwa’s NDLEA has followed this dictum: nearly 4,300 addicts have been counseled, rehabilitated and reintegrated back into the Nigerian society.

Nigerians do not agree with Buhari on many things, but they agree firmly on the NDLEA and its drug war, realizing that the seemingly intractable insecurity challenges in the country have a root in drug abuse. Speaking in Ogidi, Ijumu Local Government Area of Kogi State during the Ogidi Yam Festival in June last year, Marwa himself lamented: “What is most heartbreaking is that majority of them are young people who are initiated into cannabis use around the age of 19. There is also increasing use of other psychotropic drugs, especially heroin by a growing number of young people who are mostly initiated at the age of 22 years.”

Drug abuse, as a look at the novel Trainspotting by the Scottish writer Irvine Welsh would show, is a cancerous affliction. Welsh’s novel probes the underbelly of Scottish society with drugs, prostitution, theft and violence and shows how deadly the struggle to break free of drug addiction is. In Meth, a poem by the American writer Brandon LeVangie, we read of the inner struggles of a drug addict: “I struggle removing/temptation and sorrow/ for a better tomorrow./Life is confusing…/Distorted perception,/thoughts of deception,/ memories that are haunting/ of the drug I’m still wanting.” Beyond the pages of poems, plays and novels, a visit to Nigerian streets easily would spotlight the pangs of addiction. Mental sanity is called to question and violence and crime are routine as addicts get ruled by their muscles rather than their brains. And so when Marwa’s NDLEA goes after the merchants of death who live by the drug trade, giving no quarter to even super cops, it’s all in the bid to save lives.

But the agency, like Marwa, has its own share of human foibles, and here attention is needed even if the raised performance bar has drowned the voices of naysayers. It is alleged on social media that some NDLEA men are forcefully seizing and searching people’s phones. That must be addressed even while the agency continues to soar in what looks like something much more than the glory days of NAFDAC relived once again.

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