Key points

• The NDLEA has dismantled four methamphetamine labs in Nigeria this year.
• The largest, in Ogun State, held drugs worth over $360 million.
• Marwa urged the US to sustain or increase its support.

The United States has warned that Mexican drug cartels are increasingly looking to Africa as an alternative route for synthetic drugs, after Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency dismantled four methamphetamine laboratories this year.

Michael Gonzales, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, spoke on Tuesday during a visit to the NDLEA headquarters in Abuja.

He said he chose Nigeria for his first visit after taking office four months ago because of its strategic importance.

He said intense US pressure on cartels was “squeezing a balloon,” forcing traffickers to seek new routes through Africa to Europe and beyond.

He also noted a shift from plant-based drugs to synthetic ones, which are harder to detect and potentially deadlier.

Four labs in one year

NDLEA Chairman Buba Marwa said the busts reveal “a deliberate attempt to turn Nigeria into a manufacturing hub.”

The largest lab ever found in Nigeria was in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State, where officers arrested three Mexican meth experts and Nigerian collaborators and recovered substances worth over $360 million.

About four weeks later, agents raided another industrial-scale lab at Tapa Village in Oyo State and arrested a Mexican expert and four Nigerians.

The agency has since dismantled similar facilities in Enugu and Ebonyi states, all linked to Mexican cartels.

Marwa said the cartels want a West African corridor to ship methamphetamine to Europe, Asia and American cities.

“Every meth-producing laboratory that we shut down is a supply line that never reaches an American street,” he said.

A call to keep US support

Marwa credited the US partnership for 96,157 arrests in five years, including 250 drug barons, plus more than 15.8 million kilograms of drugs seized and 16,691 convictions.

He warned that withdrawing support would leave a gap criminal and terrorist networks would exploit, and urged Washington to maintain it “as it is, if not increased.”