The US has warned that Mexican drug gangs are turning increasingly to Africa as an alternate avenue for smuggling synthetic drugs, after the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency broke up four methamphetamine laboratories in Nigeria this year.
The operations highlighted the significance of Nigeria’s counter-narcotics campaign to both countries as Washington increases pressure on cartels operating in the Western Hemisphere, said Michael Gonzales, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, reports The PUNCH.
Gonzales, who visited the NDLEA headquarters in Abuja yesterday to laud the agency for its operational successes, said he chose Nigeria as his first visit after assuming office because of its strategic relevance and the record of the NDLEA.
I just got to this position four months ago; I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, which means I cover the countries of Africa and the Middle East. And as I was thinking about where it made the most sense to go first, Nigeria seemed an obvious answer.
“Because as a leader, as an economic powerhouse on the continent but also particularly NDLEA for the leadership and the impressive wins that you and your team and your interagency counterparts have delivered time and again.
Besides the very powerful relationship between INL and NDLEA, “I wanted to see firsthand where the magic happens, as we say in the United States,” he remarked.
“The NDLEA’s four methamphetamine laboratory busts this year are examples of the agency’s use of intelligence-led investigations, inter-agency cooperation, operational coordination and prosecution,” Gonzales said.
“The four meth lab busts just this year alone are a testament to the deployment of some of the best practices in our tradecraft, the intelligence-based knowledge collection, the coordination across national lines and agency lines, the operational excellence that goes into the actual bust, and then the interrogations, the investigations and prosecutions.
“They are all so critical because at the end of the day, counter-narcotics work, the work that each of us does day in and day out, really delivers for the people,” he said.
The significance of the operations went beyond Nigeria, the US source said, saying that the transnational nature of the narcotics trade meant successful interdiction in Nigeria might have ramifications for drug markets elsewhere in the world.
“When I speak to American audiences in the United States, I tell them that there is virtually no other foreign policy issue that has such a tangible impact on the lives of every community, virtually every family throughout our country, than narcotics.
And the reality of the narcotics trade is global. It knows no borders, has very few limits. And so the job that INL conducts in the United States and abroad and the work that NDLEA does is really delivering for the Nigerian people, for the American people,” Gonzales said.
The United States has almost four decades of expertise in helping counter-narcotics operations around the world, including through training and equipment, he said, warning that changes in trafficking patterns meant governments had to work together against criminal networks.
He said the pressure by the United States on cartels in the Western Hemisphere had been like “squeezing a balloon,” pushing traffickers to find other routes through Africa to reach markets in Europe and beyond.
The official also cited the increasing transition from plant-based narcotics to synthetic substances, which are harder to detect and can be deadlier, adding the response must treat criminal organisations as interconnected networks, including their cash flows.
In response, Marwa claimed recent investigations by the NDLEA had found a concerted plan by Mexican gangs to establish Nigeria as a hub for the manufacture of methamphetamine.
“The threat has no borders and neither does crime. The drugs we seize, the weaponry we intercept and the terrorist finance we trace are all part of the same problem.
“When we see narcotics and illicit weapons seized in the same operations and on the same routes, we are seeing the convergence of crime. Drug money buys guns. Guns feed armed organisations. Armed groups feed terrorism.
“Terrorism knows no borders. “What festers in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin does not stay there and what is trafficked through West Africa does not stop at our coastline,” the NDLEA chairman warned.
Marwa then described the operations on the facilities, starting with the largest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever uncovered by the FBI in Nigeria. Purchase Maps
The threat from the Mexican cartel is genuine and we’re dealing with it.”
“In the last few months alone, NDLEA operatives busted the biggest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever found in Nigeria, in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State, where we arrested three Mexican meth experts and their Nigerian accomplices right inside the forest where illicit drugs worth over $360 million US dollars were recovered.
Less than four weeks later, we discovered another industrial-scale facility in Tapa Village, in adjacent Oyo State, and detained a Mexican methamphetamine expert, brought in for large-scale synthesis, together with four Nigerian associates.
“We have also dismantled a similar facility in Enugu State and another one in Ebonyi State, Southeast Nigeria, all connected to the Mexican cartels. These were not isolated cases. They reveal a purposeful effort to make Nigeria a manufacturing hub,” he said. BuyMaps
The consequences of the laboratories were beyond the Nigerian market, Marwa said, adding that the cartels were looking for avenues through West Africa to ferry methamphetamine to worldwide markets.
“Let me be clear why this is important to Washington. These cartels are sprouting up in our forests not for the benefit of Nigerian consumers alone. They seek to create a West African corridor to ship industrial amounts of methamphetamine to Europe, Asia and U.S. cities.
\”Especially with the Trump hammer that is shattering the cartel traffic coming to America. “Now these cartels are looking for other ways to get to the same America,” he claimed.
Every meth-producing lab we shut down is a supply line that never reaches an American street, and every cartel operative we arrest is one less in the pipeline’, he continued.
“Our forensic chemists, our investigators and our tactical teams are, in effect, forward defence for communities in the United States.”
Marwa said the US alliance had increased the NDLEA’s capacity in forensic and chemical analysis, professional training, investigations, financial crime detection and equipment maintenance.
He said the support had led to the recent operational outcomes of the agency, which included the arrest of 96,157 drug criminals, including 250 drug lords and the recovery of almost 15.8 million kilogrammes of varied illicit narcotics in the last five years.
He said 16,691 drug dealers, including kingpins, had been convicted throughout the period.
But Marwa warned that pulling US help may leave a vacuum that criminal and terrorist groups would fill, and urged Gonzales to tell Washington that the need to maintain or enhance its aid remains.
He said, “This great partnership has powered our offensives which led to the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders including 250 drug barons, the seizure of more than 15.8 million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs and conviction of 16,691 drug traffickers including the kingpins in the last five years.
He asked the US to continue its support “as is, if not expanded,” saying that criminal networks already operated across national boundaries.
Marwa said: “Traffickers, arms dealers and terrorists cooperate across borders every day and governments confronting them must do the same.”
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