CONSTITUTIONAL and Legal Affairs Minister Dr Harrison Mwakyembe has described the fifth phase government’s war against illegal drugs in the country as very tough, but says it must be won this time round.
This is in effect turning out to be Tanzania’s second real ‘war’ after the 1978–1979 confrontation with the Ugandan army troops under Idi Amin, Mwakyembe asserted yesterday during a live interview with East Africa Radio in Dar es Salaam.
Sharing his own experiences in tackling the national narcotics scourge as a cabinet minister in the previous (fourth phase) government, he noted that given the immense power and resources that drug barons wield, the anti-drugs war is definitely going to turn ugly.
For the current government to emerge victorious, all citizens of goodwill must stand behind it, he said.
Mwakyembe described how, during his stint as transport minister in the fourth phase administration of ex-president Jakaya Kikwete, he came face-to-face with the extent of the powers that drug traffickers yield.
He recalled specifically a 2013 incident in which a Tanzanian woman managed to smuggle more than 100 kilogrammes of a banned substance used to make methamphetamine drugs onto a flight to South Africa through the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) in the city.
According to Mwakyembe, drug lords were most likely behind the security glitches that allowed the consignment to pass through all luggage checks at the airport.
“Curiously, CCTV cameras later revealed that sniffer dogs were very conveniently delayed to allow the consignment to pass through, and at the very minute it was going through the scanner, the person on duty was busy speaking on the phone,” he said.
The consignment was later impounded upon arrival at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mwakyembe said that particular incident happened even after security was supposedly tightened at JNIA following a formal International Police (Interpol) notification that the airport had become a virtual gateway for international drug trafficking.
But he applauded the government’s recent formation of a formal Drug Control and Enforcement Agency (DCEA) and appointment of seasoned security officer Rodgers Sianga as its commissioner general, saying this move has greatly enhanced chances of Tanzania eventually winning the anti-drugs war.
“We can’t afford to lose this war… we are going to defeat drug dealers the same way we defeated the people behind the murder of people with albinism,” the current justice minister insisted.
The new DCEA chief, Sianga, has said the agency’s first move will be to supply the Chief Justice the names of judges and magistrates believed to be undermining the anti-drugs war by mishandling cases that involve narcotics.
“We will show no mercy to anyone,” he said at a recent public event, pointing out that society at large is suffering from the effects of narcotics use and the high cost it is inflicting on individual users and their families.
The event saw Sianga receive a dossier containing a total of 97 new names of suspected drug barons and kingpins within and outside the country compiled by Dar es Salaam regional authorities.
Two other lists - of people suspected to be linked to the country’s narcotics trade, either as users, dealers or just contact persons – have already been made public in recent weeks.
The first contained some well-known local movie and music entertainers, while the second implicated a number of prominent local politicians, businessmen, and clerics.
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