Buba Marwa, the chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), says the agency needs more sniffer dogs to prosecute war against drug pushing, adding that each sniffer dog costs about $20,000.

Per current rates at the parallel market ( about N800 per dollar), a sniffer dog would cost the Nigerian government N16 millon, going by Mr Marwas proposition.

“We definitely need dogs. Dogs cost between $15,000 and $20,000 each,” Mr Marwa said. “I won’t state in this forum to the hearing of the cartels how many dogs we have. We need more dogs.”

The NDLEA boss disclosed while defending his agency’s budget before the House of Representatives Committee on Narcotics on Thursday.

Speaking further, he said “I will take the opportunity to express appreciation to the German criminal police — we work with them. On the dogs, they supply the dogs. They just supplied a few. More importantly, they are building a six million euro dog training school in Lagos which would be used also with our neighbours in ECOWAS.”

Mr Marwa did not state how many sniffer dogs the agency needs, making it difficult to estimate how much the NDLEA will spend on sniffer dogs in the proposed budget.

However, he explained that the agency is proposing a N40 billion budget for 2023. Recurrent expenditure will cost about N18.6 billion, while capital expenditure will cost N21.4 billion