President Bola Tinubu has reappointed Brigadier-General Mohammed Buba Marwa (rtd) as Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for another five years. This means he will be in charge until 2031.
Channels TV said that Marwa, who is from Adamawa State, was first named NDLEA Chairman by former President Muhammadu Buhari in January 2021.
Before that, he was the head of the Presidential Advisory Committee for the Elimination of Drug Abuse from 2018 until December 2020.
On November 14, 2025, Bayo Onanuga, the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, said that he will be reappointed.
Tinubu said that Marwa’s reappointment was a sign that people trusted his agency to fight drug trafficking.
“Your reappointment shows that people trust you to keep working hard to get rid of drug trafficking and drug abuse in our country.” “Please don’t stop tracking down the people who sell hard drugs and want to kill our people, especially the young ones,” Tinubu added.
But The Frontier says that while Marwa was in charge of the NDLEA, many young Nigerians started openly using and selling hard drugs on the streets. This has become a big problem across the country and a big shame for good people.
Marwa, on the other hand, is a graduate of the Nigerian Military School and the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA). He was also a military governor of Lagos and Borno states. He became a second lieutenant in 1973 and then served as Brigade Major of the 23 Armoured Brigade, Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to Lieutenant-General Theophilus Danjuma, the Chief of Army Staff, and Academic Registrar of the NDA.
He also worked as a diplomat, first as Deputy Defence Adviser at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, DC, and then as Defence Adviser to the Nigerian Permanent Mission to the United Nations.
Marwa has two master’s degrees: one in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh (1983–85) and one in Public Administration from Harvard University (1985–86).
While he was at NDLEA, Marwa oversaw a lot of important work, such as the arrest of 73,000 drug mules and barons and the seizure of more than 15 million kilograms of different dangerous substances.
Under his leadership, the organization has also run campaigns around the country to fight drug misuse.
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