A senior US State Department official has praised Nigeria’s anti-narcotics agency for its recent operational wins, saying the country was the obvious choice for his first official visit since taking office. Michael Gonzales, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) covering Africa and the Middle East, made the remarks on Tuesday during a visit to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) headquarters in Abuja. He was received by the agency’s Chairman/CEO, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Rtd), and members of the management team, according to a press statement signed by the NDLEA’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, on Tuesday (Oct 21).
Gonzales, who took up his post four months ago, said Nigeria’s standing as a continental leader and economic powerhouse, together with the NDLEA’s leadership and track record, made it the natural first stop. He said he wanted to see “firsthand where the magic happens.”
“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 does it make 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.”
Meth lab busts hailed as best practice
The US official pointed to the four methamphetamine laboratories dismantled in Nigeria this year as evidence of best-practice tradecraft. He credited intelligence-led investigations, coordination across agencies and borders, operational excellence, and thorough interrogation, investigation and prosecution.
He added that narcotics touch American communities more directly than almost any other foreign policy issue, and that because the drug trade is international and faces few constraints, the joint work of INL and the NDLEA benefits citizens of both countries.
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“The four meth lab busts just this year alone is 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. 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 one that 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.”
Trafficking routes shifting toward Africa
Gonzales noted that INL’s partnership with countries around the world spans more than four decades, and in Nigeria has largely taken the form of training and equipment donations. He explained that heavy US pressure on cartels in the Western Hemisphere was like “squeezing a balloon,” pushing trafficking flows toward Africa and then on to Europe and Oceania.
He also highlighted the move away from plant-based drugs to synthetic ones that are deadlier and harder to detect, and urged sustained action against transnational criminal organisations as a network, including the financial flows that sustain them.
Marwa: Crime has no borders
Responding, Marwa described the partnership, built on INL’s institutional support and the cooperation of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, as a shared investment in the security of both countries.
“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 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, Southeast Nigeria, all linked to the Mexican cartels. These were not isolated incidents. They show a deliberate attempt to turn Nigeria into a manufacturing hub.
“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. 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.”
Call for continued US backing
Marwa said INL support underpins the agency’s work in forensic and chemical analysis, professional training, investigative and financial-crime skills, and equipment maintenance. He credited the partnership with the agency’s recent results.
“This great partnership has fuelled 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 the conviction of 16, 691 drug traffickers, including the kingpins, in the last five years.”
Cautioning that any withdrawal of INL assistance would create a vacuum that criminal networks and terrorist groups would exploit, the NDLEA boss urged Gonzales to take a message back to Washington: that INL support, “as is, should be maintained if not increased.” He stressed that traffickers, arms dealers and terrorists collaborate across borders daily, and that the governments fighting them must do likewise.
