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Security Expert Adams Bonah says some drug cartels are trying to infiltrate the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) and has, therefore, called on the state security agency to be extra careful in its operations.

According to him, he picked the signal, which is seriously gaining grounds, somewhere last year.

Adams Bonah, who was speaking in an exclusive interview with The Chronicle, was worried over the development where illicit drug dealers are now vigorously pushing to have full control over the institution that protects the country from the illegal drug trade.

He advised the state to come “to the party first,” rather than sit aloof and “coming to the party later,” by which time the harm may have already been caused.

The Chief Executive Officer of Security Warehouse, explaining the modus operandi of these cartels, said they sponsor politicians in their campaigns, and when they win power, the cartels dictate who should head the institution that checks illicit drug deals.

He cited countries that have suffered from the dealings of the barons, whilst urging that people of integrity are appointed to head that key office, so that the cartels would not have their way.

Commenting on why these drug cartels would want to infiltrate the NACOB, Adams Bonah stated that an armed robber would not fear the victim, but rather the police patrol team that may swoop on the operation. Therefore, if the head of police could be bought, that would be done by the armed robber even before the operation, so that the team does not go to the scene or gets there late.

He said because NACOB officials have been trained, even with dogs to sniff whatever drugs they are trained to detect and are supposed to check whoever is coming into the country, the cartels would adopt ways to succeed.

“You want to infiltrate them because, let’s say, if I am the head of the institution and I am a bad person and want to be in bed with the barons, what happens is that when I know there are people there who are not loyal to me, I will move them to other places, even if it is briefly, for the drugs to go through.

“ . . So, you need to be focused to be able to fight illicit drugs. If you are not focused [you cannot fight it] and these people have infiltrated even the US, they’ve infiltrated Britain; that’s what it means, but there is that collectively effort to fight illicit drugs in the worlds, and, therefore, let’s not come to the party late [because] by the time we come to the party some few people might have been bought, and they’ve succeeded in scheming to do what they want to do, and things are out of our hands and that is where we begin to ask ourselves what just hit us,” he said.

His fear is that Ghana may become a hub for illegal drugs should the cartels have a successful agenda of transporting their wares through this country to others.

“Those who are in that industry actually control the world. If you know why Trump, the British, Germans are up in guns against immigrants and people coming in, the truth is that some people go into these countries with all sort of illicit drugs. And illicit drug is fueling the spate of terrorism we are seeing in the worlds, because illicit drug money is not accounted for, and so we’ve got to be very careful and make sure that our foremost drug enforcement agency, NACOB, is not infiltrated by the cartels which are scheming to take control of the agencies . . . These people are capable of doing it and they are at it."

He described his move as a preemptive strike to raise the alarm on the signals picked so far before the question becomes how did it happen? He advised the security agencies to be ahead of these cartels by getting their surveillance on point and using modern technology to track every move, especially at the airport.