By Kasim Sumaina
The newly appointed Chairman/Chief Executive of National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Brig. General Mohamed Marwa (rtd) has commenced the re-engineering of the agency for optimal performance.
He has also inaugurated a seven-member harmonisation committee to address all forms of distortions hampering the smooth running of the agency.
Marwa, while inaugurating the committee noted that the “step is in keeping with the federal government Circulars and the present reality in the agency that we cannot meet our objectives without raising the morale of the personnel.
In a statement issued yesterday in Abuja by the Deputy Commander of Narcotics (DCN)/Principal Staff Officer, Public Affairs, Jonah Achema, the NDLEA boss stated that: “One of my early findings is that the morale of the officers and men has dropped to the lowest ebb.”
According to him, “I have noticed distortions in the seniority roll of the agency. This has made the personnel to become poorly motivated.
“We need a highly motivated personnel to win this war, which we must win by the grace of God.”
While maintaining further that the first thing is to resolve the issue of low morale, he added: “We need to develop a proper, accurate and credible seniority roll for the personnel. We have officers in the various commands whose promotion has been delayed for no just cause whereas the vacancies are there.
“Others have been overtaken by their juniors. This is an error that must be addressed”, he said.
He informed that the Committee has five terms of reference which include receiving memoranda from aggrieved staff members and analysing them in line with set criteria taking into account service progression and vacancies, successes in the prescribed promotion examinations and disciplinary issues and to make appropriate recommendations that would address the agitation for harmonisation.
Others he said are: “to critically examine posting stagnation and address the issues of restoration of correct ranks and seniority to those who are wrongfully denied, restore correct seniority roll and develop guidelines for career path and as well as examine structural expansion of the Agency.”
