We can support, not police, drug enforcement — Ukwuani Council Chair

OBIARUKU — When an NDLEA officer drowned in a river while chasing a suspected drug offender in Obiaruku, the tragedy exposed something beyond one man’s death: a governance gap that Ukwuani Local Government Chairman, Possible Ajede, has now had to explain publicly.

The council chairman has submitted that his council has no constitutional power to form its own independent drug enforcement squad, however urgently residents might want one.

ValidViewNetwork can confirm that Ajede’s clarification came after the officer’s death triggered a heavy-handed NDLEA response in the community, with the agency’s operatives, according to the chairman, arresting “almost everybody” in the raid’s vicinity.

According to the chairman, it took the council’s intervention to secure the release of those without direct involvement.

Why local government can’t simply create its own enforcement

Findings show Nigeria’s constitutional architecture places drug law enforcement squarely under federal jurisdiction via the NDLEA.

This is a deliberate design choice meant to prevent a patchwork of local vigilante-style drug squads with inconsistent training, oversight and accountability.

Ajede’s insistence that his council can only “support” rather than independently enforce reflects that structure precisely, however frustrating it may feel to a community that just watched an officer die trying to police it alone.

The support Ajede says the council does provide

According to reports gotten by ValidViewNetwork, the council has instead built joint security committees with police, NDLEA and community representatives, established anti-cultism and vigilante support groups, and partnered with external rehabilitation centres for addiction treatment.

Furthermore, the Council is working toward a local facility, a workaround that substitutes coordination for the direct enforcement power the council legally lacks.

The uncomfortable question this incident raises

ValidViewNetwork gathered that the real story here isn’t Ajede’s legal correctness, he is correct, but what his correctness implies. That under-resourced federal agencies like the NDLEA are being asked to police drug abuse in communities where local government, despite proximity and local knowledge, has no independent enforcement authority to lean on.

ADVERTISEMENT

An officer drowned doing a federal agency’s job in a local community that constitutionally cannot help carry that specific burden.

That gap between proximity and authority is worth Nigerians sitting with, longer than one news cycle allows. ValidViewNetwork reports.