Former NDLEA boss did not sell Lagos office, Agency clarifies

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has dismissed claims making the rounds via an anonymous report on several WhatsApp platforms that a certain former Chairman/CEO of the agency sold off its headquarters’ office buildings in Ikoyi, Lagos State.

The report also said that the development is leaving officers and men stranded.

The spokesman of the agency, Femi Babafemi, said on Wednesday in Abuja that such a report was a total distortion of facts.

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According to him, the buildings referred to in the circulating piece, which did not belong to it in the first place, served as its National Headquarters before its relocation to Abuja some years ago.

“It should be noted that a Presidential Implementation Committee (PIC) on Federal Government Landed Properties took over the buildings following a government directive that all vacated or under-utilised government properties should be taken over by the PIC, sold and proceeds paid to federal government coffers.

“At the time of relocation, 70 per cent of the agency’s headquarters staff moved to Abuja while the remaining 30 per cent are still in Shaw road office, Ikoyi.

“This remaining 30 per cent will soon join the main headquarters in Abuja as soon as the new HQ building, recently bought by the federal government for the agency is ready for occupation,” Babafemi said.

He said that like other federal government agencies whose properties were taken over by the PIC, NDLEA has no hand in the sale of the mentioned properties and does not know who bought them and for how much, as the presidential committee solely handled the sale.

“The challenge before the Agency at the moment is how to remove our officers and men who live within communities where they are exposed to dangers into secure barracks accommodation, a concern already being addressed by the federal government through budgetary provisions for the construction of such barracks across the country beginning from this year.

“Members of the public are therefore urged to disregard the anonymous write-up, which is nothing but an embodiment of distortion and mischief,” Babafemi said.