Arrest of deported Nigerian drug lord betrays lax surveillance at borders

The arrest of a Nigerian drug lord, who was deported from the country three years ago, in Kayole on Wednesday lays credence to long held fears that Kenya remains a playground for international drug traffickers.

It was the second time Mr Enobemhe Emmanuel Peter was sneaking into the country after being deported to his native Nigeria over drug trafficking.

In September 2013, Mr Peter was arrested in Nairobi’s Donholm estate, barely three months after he had been deported to Nigeria alongside notorious drug lord Antony Chinedu.

At the time of his arrest in a house belonging to a woman accomplice, Mr Peter was found in possession of 425 sachets of heroin.

When questioned by police, Mr Peter confessed that he had sneaked into the country through the Namanga border using a different passport.

But the passport was not stamped, meaning he did not pass through the immigration desk.

He told police he flew back to Tanzania from Nigeria where he stayed for three days before driving to Namanga and later went through a forest into Kenya.

He was later deported, only to be rearrested in Nairobi on Wednesday, confirming fears that Kenya has been turned into a playground for international drug traffickers.

Mr Peter is among the numerous drug traffickers who have been re-arrested in the country after being deported.

In September 2013, an immigration official, Edward Kabiu Njau, was charged in court with allowing back prohibited immigrant Anaeke Chimenze, another Nigerian who had been deported alongside Mr Peter and Mr Chinedu.

Come May 2014 and another Guinean drug trafficker deported from Kenya, Mr Koman Camara alias Boss Camara, was found shot dead near Jamhuri Park.

Mr Camara had sneaked back into the country before he met his death.

POLICE ARE ON TOES
Two months after Mr Camara’s death, police yet again arrested another drug trafficker who had also been deported from the country.

Mr Mohammed Doukoure, a Burundi national, was arrested in Buruburu, three weeks after he had sneaked back through the Namanga border.

On Thursday, the Kenya government maintained that security agencies were winning the war against drug trafficking.

Interior Ministry Spokesperson Mwenda Njoka said the fact that the drug traffickers were re-arrested after sneaking back into the country demonstrates that the police were vigilant.

“We have in place systems of detecting and apprehending unwanted persons at our various points of entry and exit but it is not full proof yet, it has a few challenges which we are working towards overcoming,” he explained.

He maintained that security agencies had always managed to apprehend deportees whenever they sneaked back into the country.

Asked why the deportees always manage to beat Immigration surveillance and sneak back into the country, Mr Njoka blamed it on Kenya’s porous borders.

“The country has had porous borders for many years and it is only recently that we have started a programme of securitising our borders. The government installed the Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System in 2003.

The system was intended to assist the government in improving its watchlist capabilities by linking immigration points of entry to police and Intelligence,” he responded.

Cables released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks in December 2010 had showed that the drug trade is not only facilitated by security personnel, but also high ranking military personnel, influential businessmen and politicians, including close relatives of presidents.

Besides, Kenya, other countries where drug barons reigned supreme included Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania.

The cable accused police and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions of bungling investigations into drug trafficking in Kenya.

BIGGEST OVERHAUL
The cable, written in January 2006, when Mr William Bellamy was ambassador, also accused police of removing crucial evidence from a prosecution file leading to the acquittal of suspects over a record Sh6 billion 2004 cocaine haul.

The seizure, then Africa’s largest, followed the interception in The Netherlands of a related consignment of cocaine believed to have been shipped from Kenya.

Dutch authorities arrested several persons, including a son of a former Kenyan MP.

As if to lend credence to the cable, a ship laden with more than three tonnes of heroin had anchored in Kenya’s territorial waters for more than 10 days in March 2011, from where local and international drug traffickers purchased the drug before police intercepted a consignment worth more than Sh200 million.

Anti-narcotics police officers told Nation then that among the buyers were a suspected Nigerian international drug baron based in Nairobi, Somalis linked to piracy and a Mombasa-based businessman.

“Speedboats were used to ferry the heroin from the ship which came from Pakistan,” one of the detectives said.