The United States has warned that Mexican drug cartels are turning to Africa as an alternative trafficking route, following the discovery of four methamphetamine laboratories linked to the cartels in Nigeria this year.
Michael Gonzales, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs for Africa and the Middle East, gave the warning during a visit to the headquarters of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency in Abuja on Tuesday.
Gonzales commended the NDLEA for dismantling the laboratories, describing the operations as evidence of intelligence-led investigations, inter-agency cooperation and effective law enforcement.
He said he chose Nigeria as his first destination after assuming office four months ago because of its economic importance in Africa and the NDLEA’s record of operational successes.
“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,” he said.
Gonzales said the four laboratory discoveries demonstrated the importance of intelligence gathering, cross-border coordination, investigations and prosecutions in combating the international drug trade.
He stressed that counter-narcotics operations in Nigeria had implications for the United States and other countries because drug trafficking networks operated across national boundaries.
The US official said Washington had more than four decades of experience supporting counter-narcotics operations worldwide through training, equipment and other forms of assistance.
He warned that intensified pressure on cartels in the Western Hemisphere could push traffickers to seek alternative routes through Africa to reach markets in Europe and elsewhere.
Describing the effect as “squeezing a balloon”, Gonzales said efforts to disrupt trafficking networks in one region could force criminal groups to change their routes.
He also highlighted the growing shift from plant-based drugs to synthetic substances, which he said were more difficult to detect and could be deadlier.
Gonzales called for a coordinated response that targeted criminal organisations as interconnected networks, including their financial operations.
Responding, NDLEA Chairman, retired Brig. Gen. Buba Marwa, said the agency’s recent operations had exposed what he described as a deliberate attempt by Mexican cartels to establish Nigeria as a methamphetamine manufacturing base.
“The Mexican cartel threat is real, and we are confronting it,” Marwa said.
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He cited the discovery of what the agency described as Nigeria’s largest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory in a forest in Ijebu East, Ogun State, where three Mexican nationals identified as methamphetamine experts and their Nigerian collaborators were arrested.
Marwa said the operation led to the recovery of illicit substances valued at more than $360 million.
He added that about four weeks later, NDLEA operatives raided another industrial-scale laboratory in Tapa Village, Oyo State, arresting a Mexican methamphetamine expert and four Nigerian collaborators.
Similar facilities were subsequently dismantled in Enugu and Ebonyi states, he said, linking the operations to Mexican cartels.
Marwa argued that the discoveries indicated an effort to use Nigeria as a production base for supplying international drug markets.
“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,” he said.
He added that every laboratory dismantled disrupted a potential supply line to overseas markets, describing the NDLEA’s work as contributing to the protection of communities in the United States.
Marwa said cooperation with the US had strengthened the agency’s capacity in forensic and chemical analysis, professional training, investigations, financial crime detection and equipment maintenance.
He said the partnership had contributed to the arrest of 96,157 drug offenders, including 250 drug barons, and the seizure of more than 15.8 million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs over the past five years.
During the same period, 16,691 drug traffickers, including major operators, were convicted, he added.
Marwa warned that any reduction in US assistance could create gaps that criminal and terrorist networks might exploit.
He urged Washington to maintain or increase its support for the agency, noting that traffickers, arms dealers and terrorist groups continued to cooperate across borders.
“Traffickers, arms dealers and terrorists cooperate across borders every day, and governments confronting them must do the same,” he said.
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