The Senate has waded into the festering crisis between Deputy Senate Leader, Senator Oyelola Ashiru, and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, which, in response to an earlier attack by the Senator representing Kwara South, revealed that illicit drugs were found when its operatives raided his house in Ilorin.
The upper legislative chamber, , at Tuesday’s plenary, set up a six-member panel to investigate the weighty allegation against one of their own by the NDLEA.
Ashiru had brought the accusations by the NDLEA to the notice of the Red Chamber, asking for protection as his privilege had been breached by the anti-narcotics agency.
Moments after the embattled senator tendered his complaint, the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, announced the establishment of an ad-hoc committee to investigate the accusation.
“The Senate immediately sets up an ad hoc committee to invite the NDLEA to come and justify the allegation against Sen. Ashiru,” Akpabio told his colleagues.
Canvassing the Senate’s protection, Ashiru had complained that he stirred the hornets’ nest during the October 15 debate on a ‘Bill for an Act to Establish the National Institute for Drug Awareness and Rehabilitation’ where he counselled the agency to review its modus operandi and tackle the internal corruption that he alleged was plaguing it.
While supporting the bill, which most senators turned their backs against, Ashiru had declared that: “The failure of NDLEA has resulted in the high rate of drug trafficking going on in the country. The NDLEA is corrupt and compromised, hence, I support the creation of a National Institute for Drug Awareness and Rehabilitation.”
But on Monday, the NDLEA came out smoking , taking strong exception to what Ashiru said.
Addressing a press conference on behalf of the agency’s Chairman, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Buba Marwa (retd.), Femi Babafemi, NDLEA’s Director of Media and Advocacy, said the senator spoke the way he did in order to get back at the agency for its temerity to raid his GRA Ilorin home during which the agency found illicit drugs on some of his domestic staff.
The NDLEA said: “The personal house of the senator (Ashiru) in GRA Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State, had been raided in the recent past, where drugs and illicit substances were recovered while two of his aides: Ibrahim Mohammed and Muhammed Yahaya were arrested. Based on credible intelligence and surveillance which confirmed that the senator’s house was being used as a drug joint for drug dealers and users, the house was raided by our operatives at 1:30pm on February 4, 2024, during which the two aides were arrested, while a third suspect escaped arrest.
“In an earlier encounter with the senator, the agency also received intelligence that some of his boys popularly known as ‘Omo Senator’ operating from his hometown, Offa, were equally dealing in illicit drugs. A raid was subsequently carried out on their joint in Offa, where one of them, Oluwatosin Odepidan was arrested and illicit drugs such as methamphetamine and cannabis were recovered from him on June 11, 2023.
“The bid to get the agency to drop the case against Odepidan, including a visit to the Kwara State Command headquarters of the agency in Ilorin by the Personal Assistant to the senator, one Omoluabi, was rebuffed as Odepidan was promptly arrested and charged to court.”
But Ashiru vigorously denied the accusation on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, describing it as a “smear” campaign, saying he neither drinks alcohol nor any other thing “apart from water,” and would never be able to identify an illicit drug if he sees one.
“The NDLEA now tried to gaslight me…,” he lamented, pleading: “For the protection of myself and the entire Senate, we must do something.”
