NDLEA Trains 6 West African Countries On How To Dismantle Clandestine Laboratories

 The National Drug Law En­forcement Agency, NDLEA, has conducted a regional training for six West African countries on how to dismantle clandestine laboratories with a view to strengthen regional action against drug cartels.

The training, which took place in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivo­ire, from March 27 to 29, in­volving six other West Afri­can countries―Republic of Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Cote D’Ivoire and Nigeria―was part of an ECOWAS project known as “Organised Crime: West African Response to Trafficking” (OCWART), co-funded by the European Union (EU) and German Fed­eral Foreign Office and exe­cuted primarily by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internatio­nale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC.

As the lead agency at the workshop, NDLEA drew from its experiential knowledge ac­quired from the dismantling of 21 clandestine laboratories found in Nigeria since 2011 to teach other West African countries the practical know-how of handling illicit labo­ratories.

A total of eight topical lectures, practicals and Q&A sessions were delivered in two days by a team of NDLEA fa­cilitators that include Joseph Nbona Sunday (Director, Pros­ecutions and Legal Services); Margaret Ogundipe (Director, Forensic and Chemical Mon­itoring); Adebowale Rahman (Digital Intelligence specialist); Anebi Ajilima (Forensic and crime lab expert) and Felix Tagbo (Operation specialist).

The first two days of the workshop dwelt on various perspectives on the subject matter, including the anat­omy of a clandestine labo­ratory, basic clandestine lab investigation techniques, intelligence gathering, oper­ations safety and guidelines for dismantling clandestine laboratories, clean-up and de­contamination of illicit labs and sites, basics of controlled delivery and prosecuting cas­es of clandestine laboratories.

The workshop was wrapped up on the third day with a practical exercise on the dismantling of a mock clandestine laboratory at the Abidjan Police Academy, which the Nigerian contin­gent set up and the partic­ipants, divided into teams, took turns to dismantle and decontaminate.

The workshop’s seven participating countries sent in representatives from rele­vant organisations, including Ghana’s Narcotics Control Commission; Sierra Leone’ Serious Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism Coordina­tion Directorate; Drug Law Enforcement Agency of the Gambia (DLEAG); Transna­tional Crime Unit of Liberia and the INTERPOL.