The United States has warned that Mexican drug cartels are increasingly looking to Africa as an alternative route for trafficking synthetic drugs, after the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency dismantled four methamphetamine laboratories in Nigeria this year.
The US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, Michael Gonzales, said the operations demonstrated the importance of Nigeria’s counter-narcotics campaign to both countries, as Washington intensifies pressure on cartels operating in the Western Hemisphere.
Gonzales spoke on Tuesday during a visit to the NDLEA headquarters in Abuja, where he commended the agency for its operational successes and said he chose Nigeria as his first visit after assuming office because of the country’s strategic importance and the NDLEA’s record.
“I became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement just four months ago, covering all countries of Africa and the Middle East. And when I was thinking where it makes the most sense to visit first, Nigeria was a clear 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.
“In addition to the very robust partnership between INL and NDLEA, I wanted to see firsthand where the magic happens, as we say in the United States,” he said.
Gonzales specifically cited the four methamphetamine laboratory busts recorded by the NDLEA this year as evidence of the agency’s use of intelligence-led investigations, inter-agency cooperation, operational coordination and prosecution.
“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’re all so critical because ultimately counter-narcotics work, the work that each of us does day in and day out, truly delivers for the people,” he said.
The US official said the significance of the operations extended beyond Nigeria, arguing that the international nature of the narcotics trade meant that successful interdiction in Nigeria could have consequences for drug markets in other parts of the world.
“When I am talking to American audiences in the United States, I tell them there’s virtually no other issue of foreign policy that so tangibly affects the lives of every community, virtually every family across our country, than narcotics.
“And the reality of the narcotics trade is international. It knows no boundaries, very few constraints. And so, the work that INL does in the United States and globally and the work that NDLEA does fundamentally delivers for the Nigerian people, for the American people,” Gonzales said.
He added that the United States had more than four decades of experience supporting counter-narcotics operations around the world, including through training and equipment, and warned that changes in trafficking patterns required countries to work together against criminal networks.
He said intense US pressure on cartels in the Western Hemisphere was effectively “squeezing a balloon,” forcing traffickers to seek alternative routes through Africa to reach markets in Europe and beyond.
The official also pointed to the growing shift from plant-based narcotics to synthetic drugs, which he described as harder to detect and potentially deadlier, saying the response must target criminal organisations as interconnected networks, including their financial flows.
Marwa, in his response, said the NDLEA’s recent operations had uncovered what he described as a deliberate attempt by Mexican cartels to establish Nigeria as a manufacturing base for methamphetamine.
“Crime has no borders, and neither does the threat. The drugs we seize, the arms we intercept and the terrorist financing we trace are not separate problems.
“When we seize narcotics and illicit weapons in the same operations and along the same routes, we are looking at the convergence of crime. Drug money buys guns, guns sustain armed groups, and armed groups sustain terrorism.
“Terrorism has no borders. What festers in the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin does not stay there, and what is trafficked through West Africa does not stop at our coastline,” the NDLEA chairman said.
Marwa then detailed the operations against the laboratories, beginning with the largest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever discovered by the agency in Nigeria.
“The Mexican cartel threat is real, and we are confronting it.
“In recent months, NDLEA operatives dismantled the largest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever discovered in Nigeria, in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State, where we arrested three Mexican meth experts and their Nigerian collaborators right in the forest where illicit substances worth over $360 million US dollars were recovered.
“Barely four weeks later, we raided another industrial-scale laboratory at Tapa Village in neighbouring Oyo State and arrested a Mexican methamphetamine expert, brought in for large-scale synthesis, together with four Nigerian collaborators.
“We have since dismantled a similar facility in Enugu State and another in Ebonyi State, South-East Nigeria, all linked to the Mexican cartels. These were not isolated incidents. They show a deliberate attempt to turn Nigeria into a manufacturing hub,” he said.
Marwa said the implications of the laboratories went beyond the Nigerian market, arguing that the cartels were seeking routes through West Africa to move methamphetamine to international markets.
“Let me be plain about why this matters to Washington. These cartels are not setting up in our forests to supply Nigerian consumers alone. They want a West African corridor to ship industrial quantities of methamphetamine to Europe, to Asia, and to American cities.
“Especially taking into consideration the President Trump hammer that is smashing cartel traffic en route to America. These cartels are now seeking alternative routes to get to the same America,” he said.
He added, “Every meth-producing laboratory that we shut down is a supply line that never reaches an American street, and every cartel operative we arrest is one fewer in the pipeline.
“Our forensic chemists, our investigators and our tactical teams are, in effect, forward defence for communities in the United States.”
Marwa said the US partnership had strengthened the NDLEA’s capabilities in forensic and chemical analysis, professional training, investigations, financial-crime detection and equipment maintenance.
He said the support had contributed to the agency’s recent operational results, including the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders, among them 250 drug barons, and the seizure of more than 15.8 million kilogrammes of assorted illicit drugs in the last five years.
He added that 16,691 drug traffickers, including kingpins, had been convicted during the period.
Marwa, however, warned that withdrawing US support could create a gap that criminal and terrorist networks would exploit, and appealed to Gonzales to convey to Washington the need to sustain or increase its assistance.
“This great partnership has fueled our offensives that yielded the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders including 250 drug barons, the seizure of over 15.8 million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs and conviction of 16,691 drug traffickers including the kingpins, in the last five years,” he said.
He urged the US to maintain its support “as it is, if not increased,” arguing that criminal networks already operated across national boundaries.
“Traffickers, arms dealers and terrorists cooperate across borders every day, and governments confronting them must do the same,” Marwa said. Punch
